Hairspray (2007)

At the risk of sounding horribly dull and cliched, remakes are a tricky subject. A lot of people don't like talking about them. To be fair, we've had two great remakes - John Huston's 1941 film noir masterpiece The Maltese Falcon (a remake of two previous adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's eponymous novel) and Scorsese's 2006 Oscar-winning epic The Departed (a remake of Hong Kong mob story Infernal Affairs).

But for every good remake, we get thirty like Gus Van Sant's Psycho or The Ladykillers (from the Coen Bros. slump of the early 2000s) or - God forgive me for even invoking this film's name - Steve Martin's The Pink Panther. And lest we forget, Nic Cage's version of The Wicker Man, unintentionally hysterical with lines like "Step away from the bike!" and "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?!", was a remake of a British suspense/horror film with Christopher Lee (automatically superior by default).

So you can understand why I typically roll my eyes when word of a remake whispers around IMDb - case in point, the pointless Keanu Reeves starring in a pointless remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I get even more skeptical when a film purports itself to be a remake of an obscure 80s movie from a midnight movie director with a strong cult following and no possible way of being family friendly.

Then a movie called Hairspray comes along and completely reinvents my concept of what a remake should be. Though technically a second-degree remake (being a filmed version of the Broadway musical based on John Waters's original 1988 film), Adam Shankman's Hairspray is, in my opinion, the third best film of 2007 (landing behind There Will Be Blood and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street).

And, as it turns out, the difference between second and third place is one dud song; where Sweeney had no songs worth fast-forwarding, Hairspray sadly has one right in the middle of the movie. So, since it's a musical and since I fear becoming formulaic, I'll walk through the plot synopsis song by song. "Good Morning Baltimore," a peppy number about the power of dreams and the need to follow them (lest, as Cherry Darling informed us in Planet Terror, "dreams become the thing you talk about instead of the thing you do"), introduces us to pleasantly plump Tracy Turnblad, played to bubbly perfection by newcomer Nikki Blonsky (who seems thus far to have been a one trick pony). Then it's time to meet "The Nicest Kids in Town," the twenty dancers on the Corny Collins Show, a TV dance program hosted by exaggeratedly swanky yet slightly exasperated host Corny Collins (James Marsden). Among the Kids are lead dancer Amber (Brittany Snow, who takes the catty blonde cliche and plays it to the hilt) and top heartthrob Link (Zac Efron, finally getting a chance to spread his wings away from the Mouse).
When Corny announces that Nicest Kid Brenda is taking a leave for "Just nine months," Tracy sees her chance and auditions for the show. But she comes up against Amber's stage-mom matriarch Velma (a delightfully wicked Michelle Pfeiffer), "Miss Baltimore Crabs," who's determined to keep anyone who's different off the show (sensing the message yet?). Later, Tracy's sent to detention, a paradise of dancing and diversity where the races mix and groove - and where Tracy finally meets Link and falls in love. "I Can Hear the Bells" - can you? Finally the "Ladies Choice" gets a song all to himself, giving Efron the opportunity for his vocals to shine and giving Tracy the opportunity to have her dance moves seen.

To the delight of best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes, who [it seems] can actually act!) and Tracy's parents Wilbur (Christopher Walken, a caricature of himself but a lovable one) Edna (John Travolta, who with a Baltimore accent and a LOT of makeup actually passes as slightly feminine), Tracy snags a spot on the Corny Collins Show, to the predicted chagrin of Velma and Amber who both loathe "The New Girl in Town." They also hate Negro Day, Corny's monthly episode featuring African-American dancers and crooners led by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) and her son Seaweed (Elijah Kelley, whose talent and resemblance to Sammy Davis Jr. ought to land him a spot in a biopic).

Tracy has hit the big time, even scoring a spokesgirl spot for Mr. Pinky (a marvelous cameo from Jerry Stiller, who played Wilbur in the original movie) during "Welcome to the 60s," in which Edna gets her makeover. In terms of pure fun, it's tough to beat "Run and Tell That," Seaweed's ode to being different. Even Maybelle's "Big, Blonde, and Beautiful" is sweet as chocolate cake, which Maybelle and Edna ingest in mass quantities to make the Coneheads blush. A reprise of "BB&B" features Velma attempting (hysterically fruitlessly) to seduce Wilbur, while Edna gets dolled up for her man, who she catches in an apparently compromising position with Velma. The two women collide, and Edna forces Wilbur to move out.
Wilbur atones with Edna in a catchy duet of romance, "You're Timeless to Me," which couples dated references to the Sixties with slightly insulting professions of love ("You're like a fatal disease, babe / But there's no cure / So let this fever rage"). Then comes the aforementioned dud, "I Know Where I've Been," Maybelle's message of racial integration no matter the price, layered over a march on the racist practices of Velma's station WYZT.

But the best number comes after the protest march, when Tracy is imprisoned in Penny's basement awaiting a trip to "the big house," when Penny is similarly tethered to her bed via jump rope, while Link waits for Tracy to come home, and while Seaweed aims "to rescue the fair maiden" Penny - it's "Without Love," by far the standout song in terms of vocals, lyrics, even direction a la Shankman. The rest would be criminal for me to describe in any detail (even Corny's last number, "Hairspray," is a barrel of fun), but suffice it to say that Tracy succeeds in teaching the whole world that - no matter what repression society places - "You Can't Stop The Beat."

I didn't say much about the perfect casting choices made in this movie, because the real star of the film is the music, including a few new numbers by the songwriting team of Wittman & Shaiman, such as the end credits tune "Come So Far (Got So Far to Go)" which will make you sit through the entire credit sequence, something I hardly ever do. But the cast is perfect, too; from Bynes to Walken, from Snow to Marsden, it's impossible to find someone who isn't spot-on for their specific role. Even Paul Dooley, in a small role as Ultra-Clutch Hairspray's exec, simmers with frustration at "that chubby communist" Tracy. The film is also addicting; it's one of those works that whenever it's on cable I can't resist turning it on just to see where they're at - and then stay until the end.

The dialogue (and occasionally lyrics) is hilarious, allowing the anti-racism medicine to go down with more than a spoonful of sugar. A great deal of the laughs come from the impeccable delivery of campy lines such as "Plastic little spastic" or "I am now a checkerboard chick!" (both delivered by Bynes, a real comedic talent whose roles here and in She's the Man tell me she needs the right vehicle to shine) The problem with Waters's original is the deliberate pandering to an audience seeking camp; as Edna, Divine seemed awkwardly masculine while trying to hard, and the original ending featured a roach bomb in one character's beehive do. This new interpretation of the story is effortless, intentionally yet subtly cheesy without calling attention to itself.

If I had a complaint, it's that two of the stage production's songs, "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now" and "Cooties," have been cut - the former a foot-stomping temper tantrum shared by Amber, Penny, and Tracy at their overbearing mothers, and the latter serving as Amber's "talent portion" at the Miss Teenage Hairspray Spectactular. Maybe I'm just a Brittany Snow fan (and I have been since her turn as white supremacist Ariel on Nip/Tuck) who wanted to see more of her in the movie, but it seems these two songs might have made up for "I Know Where I've Been" (which really could have been cut). Sure, it'd give the film an almost 2.5 hour runtime, but I'm asking more from Zack Snyder in his Watchmen adaptation. Come on, Shankman; it's not too late to film these scenes and put them in a director's cut! (Versions of the songs appear in the end credits, but they're somehow not as charming without accompanying visuals.)

At one point, Link tells Edna that he was "just at home, practicing my new twist on the twist." All too often, "new twists" don't go over so well; Catwoman, anyone? Thank heavens this movie does so well at polishing a somewhat slipshod original production into a Top Five movie.