Hairspray + summer movies.

"The emergence of Hairspray as a hit Broadway musical was the ultimate joke," writes David Edelstein in New York. "Now busloads of suburbanites could thrill to what began as a gay boy's wet dream of the fusion of early rock and roll and outlandish middle-class tackiness. Adam Shankman's movie of the Broadway Hairspray gets better as it lumbers along, but there's something garish about its hustle - it's like an elephant trumpeting in your face. Every number is a showstopper: pumping arms, ecstatic frugging, hyperactive editing, climax on top of climax. The songs have the same manic pitch and blur together; there's nothing as seductive as the centerpiece of [John] Waters's movie, the sinuous 'Limbo Rock.'"

"Shankman's movies make a shitload, and often stink like one, but somewhere along the way, he must have picked something up (maybe in choreographing truly great modern films like Boogie Nights and Stuck on You), because this new candy-colored version of John Waters's affectionate ode to the music of Baltimore in the 1960s and embracing your girth is the kind of movie tuner that we've been promised for years now," writes Jason Clark at Slant.

Updated through 7/20.

"I admire John Travolta, but using this movie star, rather than the show's Harvey Fierstein, as Edna Turnblad, Tracy's hefty mother, is an idiocy on the same level as replacing Julie Andrews with Audrey Hepburn for the movie version of My Fair Lady," argues David Denby in the New Yorker.

"[T]his bright, bouncy movie musical is a happy surprise, a candy-colored ode to outsiders that left me with a big grin," writes David Ansen. Also in Newsweek: "A white actor wouldn't dare put on dark makeup to appear black today," notes Jennie Yabroff. "So why is it still OK for male actors to wear dresses?"

"The fact that Hairspray is a mildly amusing one-note crock isn't bothering the critics so far," notes Jeffrey Wells.

Jesse Green talks with Travolta for the New York Times.

Earlier: David D'Arcy (Screen Daily), Dennis Harvey (Variety) and David Poland (Movie City News).

Updates, 7/18: "Shankman has gotten Hairspray on the screen, all right, but he hasn't rethought the material in cinematic terms (the way, for example, that Frank Oz did when adapting the similarly stylized Little Shop of Horrors)," writes Scott Foundas in the Voice. "The result is an odd hybrid that lacks both the rambunctious energy of a live performance and the expressionistic pull of a great movie musical."

"Hairspray stands as one of 2007's great films," declares Bill Gibron at PopMatters. "It's intoxicating and invigorating, jumpstarting your long dead belief in the art of the movie picture while systematically saving the summer from such standard operating ordinariness as sequels and remakes."

"The movie business has been heading this way for years, but this summer is proving the apotheosis of the one-week blockbuster," writes David M Halbfinger in the New York Times. "The blur of big-budget films may have left moviegoers with whiplash, given how quickly each film announces itself in television ads and then disappears from marquees, yet few in Hollywood are complaining. Far from it, since the steep drop-offs are largely fueled by a run of blockbusters from every major studio, and Hollywood has a chance of breaking 2004's summer box office record."

Chris Braiotta, writing for the Boston Phoenix, finds Hairspray "absurdly likable, with its go-get-'em energy and unironic joy."

Kristin Thompson sorts through some old magazines and finds herself comparing Hollywood's fare in two summers: 1994 and this one.

"In his marvelously esoteric obsession with outsiders, Waters draws inspiration from the likes of bohemian pariah Jack Smith," notes Eric Kohn at the Reeler. "But the musical Hairspray is closer to the vitality of the lavish Hollywood productions that Smith's avant-garde creations naughtily deconstructed. Its brash subversive edge hides beneath the rhythms.... It's easy to see how a fluffy project like Hairspray could get squashed by the distinctly separate boundaries of film language, but the movie finds a solid balance between a gloriously stagy feel for its big numbers and old-fashioned movie magic to lift the overall feeling to the level of a big-screen sensation. It offers a fleeting excitement, but an impressive one; the movie might not change your life, but it's sure to brighten your day."

Matt Dentler asks Todd Rohal, "What is your favorite movie of Summer 2007 and why?" The answer may have you calling up your friendly bootlegger.

Update, 7/19: "That Hairspray is good-hearted is no surprise," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "The surprise may be that this Hairspray, stuffed with shiny showstoppers, Kennedy-era Baltimore beehives and a heavily padded John Travolta in drag, is actually good.... [T]he overall mood of Hairspray is so joyful, so full of unforced enthusiasm, that only the most ferocious cynic could resist it. It imagines a world where no one is an outsider and no one is a square, and invites everyone in. How can you refuse?"

"Hairspray isn't noxious like the Dreamgirls movie-musical, but it isn't nearly good enough," declares Armond White in the New York Press. "[T]his movie-musical adaptation makes the same mistake as the 2002 Broadway incarnation - it domesticates Waters's parodistic anarchy into general-audience silliness."

Richard Corliss profiles Travolta for Time, and the piece opens with a terrific story. But that photo by John Russo is disturbing somehow.

Updates, 7/20: "Hairspray is reasonably entertaining," concedes Stephanie Zacharek at Salon. "But do we really need to be entertained reasonably? Waters' original was a crazy sprawl that made perfect sense; this Hairspray toils needlessly to make sense of that craziness, and something gets lost in the translation. But the one thing that's truly wrong with Hairspray isn't the fault of the filmmakers: It simply has no Divine. Still, her ghost, dressed in a muumuu of moonlight, insists on shimmering over the proceedings. It's little wonder everything below her pales in comparison."

"[T]he movie's style and exuberance torpedoed my initial misgivings within seconds," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

"[A]s film versions of stage musicals go, Hairspray is infinitely funnier and quicker on its feet than The Producers or Chicago," writes the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu. "At the screening I attended, when the audience wasn't laughing at lines such as Queen Latifah's 'If we get any more white people in this record store this is going to be a suburb,' sections of it were dancing in the aisles."

"Though the film is too slick and heavy-handed in its pro-integration sloganeering, and it's burdened by Travolta's ill-conceived star turn, its infectious high spirits and catchy tunes still pack one hell of a sugar rush," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

For the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, Hairspray "manages to be not completely outrageous, not completely relaxed and not completely funny, with daubs of satire applied with a paintbrush eight inches across." Also, Alice Wignall interviews Nikki Blonsky.

"The movie seems guileless and rambunctious, but it looks just right (like a Pat Boone musical) and sounds just right (like a Golden Oldies disc) and feels just right (like the first time you sang 'We Shall Overcome' and until then it hadn't occurred to you that we should)," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Thanks to the casting, to Shaiman's genuinely memorable score, and to Shankman's direction, Hairspray is - reservations be damned - totally enjoyable," writes Andy Klein.

For Aaron Dobbs, Hairspray is "the best movie musical in years."

Posted by dwhudson at July 16, 2007 5:03 AM