Big Hair Meets Harry Potter

It's rare when a film boasts perfect casting. And it's rare when a film finds me smiling for it's entire running time, 117 minutes in Hairspray's case. What a delight!

From the first moment an adorable Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad begins her morning, you know you're going to love this movie. We soon learn that Tracy's biggest dream is to be a dancer on Baltimore's Corny Collins Show with her heartthrob, Link Larkin.

John Waters reprises his cameo appearance as the neighborhood "Flasher" during "Good Morning Baltimore." John Travolta approaching the role of Tracey's mother Edna as a shy overweight size 60--rather than camping it up as a drag queen--played great on screen. Another Travoltian touch, I love his work.

Thank goodness Michelle Pfeiffer is back. Pfeiffer really is not just another pretty face that the camera loves. She plays the essential villainess Velma Von Tussle as if the role was written for her.

Christoper Walken must have loved playing Wilbur Turnblad, when he and Edna sing "Your Timeless To Me," you see him sitting outside in the chair just cracking up as Travolta sings to him---it looked like a classic out-of-character moment.

Queen Latifah shows her stuff as Motormouth Maybelle, one of her best lines is "If we get any more white people in here, this place is gonna be a suburb."

Every cast member gets their moment or two in the lights. From Taylor Parks as Little Inez to Zac Efron as Link Larkin, to the terrific Elijah Kelley as Seaweed J. Stubbs.

Hairspray places 20th Century cultural and historical significance smack into the 21st. For that John Waters and Hairspray 2007's filmmakers should be proud. Check out the trailer below.

SideBar:

I saw Hairspray at the Vogue, a neighborhood single screen theatre on upper Sacramento Street in San Francisco. While waiting for the film to start, a middle-aged woman came in carrying her new Harry Potter and sat a few seats over from me. I commented on Harry Potter, she said "my husband's already ahead of me" and promptly opened the book to continue reading. Her husband came in a few minutes later with a large popcorn and his own copy of Harry Potter. He settled in and cracked open his book. On my 1 California bus ride home around 6 o'clock, a woman boarded carrying her copy of Harry Potter, found a seat, and without skipping a beat, turned once again to Harry.

Hairspray - Trailer