Who wouldn’t want to look at the macho John Travolta grow to
be a voluptuous, shimmy shaking big cool mama in “Hairspray”? Once you have
seen him as that, you will never see the ol’ charmer of Grease the same way again.
Even with its superstar gender mix, and an array of seasoned stars like
Queen Latifa, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, the story still proved its
mettle. Powerful words like segregation, equality and the bold, folded in well with the breezy summery clean comedy approach. All these stars and strong
themes could have dissolved the narrative of this 2 hour-long picture
into one big gooey mess of a motion picture. But it doesn’t.
In fact, it has become nothing short of a hallowed classic. Other than great performances and a good story line, it was perhaps the nostalgic 60’s (the hair, the colour and what is with that
doll-dance mudra?) that partly did the trick or the goading dark history of
inequality, or the timeless insane attention to weight issues; or a bit of everything, I guess, that comes through into making this one kick-your-shoes-into- frenzy kinda movie of all times.
And the lyric.
Ummm, umm! What yumminess those
were…You can’t avoid stunners such as
“ Who needs a twig, when you can climb a tree” (Big, Blonde and
Beautiful) or “ darker the berry, sweeter the juice”(Run and Tell That) or “I
am a checkerboard chick” dialogue when Penny Pingleton kisses ‘Seaweed’, a
black on air. The first time I was watching this movie with my friends, we sure were
rolling off our chair for all those juicy innuendos.
Even now, when I see Hairspray (for the nth time), it never fails
to get my two left feet moving. This is what Broadway is supposed to be right? Fun,
bright, and make you want to sing and dance along. None of that Les Miserable claptrap.
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