The whole family went to see Hairspray the other day. I'm always annoyed by movie reviews that compare the movie in question to a book or another movie, because that's ultimately irrelevant. The only question is whether the movie at hand is worth seeing. In this case, the answer is yes. I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would--the music is good, the script is witty, the performances are (mostly) good, and a good time was had by all. Even though John Travolta looked creepy as hell--there's just no disguising his enormous cube of a head, and for that reason he doesn't really make a credible woman--he was actually acting and turned in a pretty good performance. (As all the movies I've seen this summer begin to run together in my mind, I sat there wondering if maybe John Travolta's head was actually the All Spark, and I was wondering if Shia LeBoeuf was going to wander in and rip off Travolta's head and press it into Megatron's chest and blow him up. It didn't happen. But that would be cool.)
Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's compare this to the original and enumerate the ways in which it is wanting. I guess my biggest problem with the new movie is the whole Tracey/Link romance. In the original movie, it's completely credible that Link falls for Tracey, because she's naughty and fabulous and a great dancer, and they hook up early on and spend the rest of the movie making out like typical horny teens. In the new movie, though, Tracey is just perky. I mean, Ricki Lake was perky too, but there was other stuff going on, whereas now, it's all about the perkiness. They also don't make it clear that she's a great dancer, and her naughtiness is all political and not sexual, and so it's hard to see why Link likes her. This is also because Zac Efron does a credible imitation of a block of wood for most of the movie. So it's hard to tell if the filmmakers intentionally neutered the romance, or if that just happened because Zac Efron can't convey infatuation/horniness on screen. It's funny, because the Penny/Seaweed romance is credible and horny, and they get lots of wet kisses on screen, whereas Tracey and Link only get a couple of relatively chaste kisses at the very end. I think it probably says something about where we are as a culture that the interracial romance is presented realistically, and the fat/skinny romance is completely de-sexualized. It's like they think America isn't ready for it or something. Weird.
Alert--while at Hairspray, we saw a preview for Across the Universe, which is yet another in a long series of masturbatory baby boom nostalgia pics. Oh, we were carefree and innocent, and then the war came and took away our national innocence. As I've said before, other people's nostalgia is inherently annoying, and this is no exception. I just think it's time for the baby boom to get over the 60's already. You can say this about coming of age in the 80's--those of us who did aren't going to torment all the generations that follow us with phoney nostalgia about how our teenage decade was so wonderful and important. It's just like, yeah, there were leg warmers and neon socks, great teen movies and great postpunk, and then we all FREAKING GREW UP AND GOT LIVES! Ahem. Oh, did I mention that the Across the Universe movie apparently features lots and lots of horrible versions of Beatles songs? Oh, Gawd, if there was any way to make the whole movie about the glorious 60's worse, it's to have 20something actors doing their crap renditions of Beatles songs. I can't help thinking if Michael Jackson could only keep his freaking hands to himself, he wouldn't need to pimp out the Beatles catalog to anybody who shows up at his house with cash.
