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Starring:
John Travolta, Queen Latifah, Billy Crystal, Michelle Pfeiffer
Review:
It’s a gay thing. That seems to be the excuse most guys use to
avoid musicals. Chicago? Gay. Dreamgirls?
Supergay. Phantom of the Opera? Don’t start. No way is
Hairspray going to turn the dudes Brokeback. For
starters, it stars John Travolta in a dress. But cut it some slack,
and the movie version of the still-running Broadway hit is a
plus-size bundle of fun, despite herky-jerky pacing.
It helps that Leslie Dixon’s screenplay stays in tune with the
source material, the 1988 movie that gave John Waters — the sultan
of sleaze — his first mainstream hit. Set in the racially divided
Baltimore of 1962, the Waters film suggests that the closest a
black teenager could get to cultural integration was “Negro Day” on
The Corny Collins Show, a local whiter-than-white
American Bandstand….
Rating: 3 Stars
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