Hairspray

“If you remember the ‘60s, you weren’t there.” This is a quote from the late Dennis Hopper, but he’s talking about the late ‘60s. Everyone remembers the early ‘60s, which was a time of purity when someone named Chubby Checker was a famous person. The early ‘60s were before the Beatles, LDS, Vietnam and hippes. It was very similar to the late ‘50s, besides the cars being not as fancy and people enlisting in the Peace Corps, and every town with a huge population tuned in to a TV station that had something called “The Hop.” Roger Ebert admitted, ““The Hop” was the name of the show on Channel 3 in Champaign-Urbana, where I grew up. It had other names in other towns, but it always had the same format: a studio full of pimply faced teenagers in ducktails and ponytails, pumping away to midstream rock music under the benevolent supervision of the local Dick Clark clone.”

Ebert continued, “Everybody I knew watched “The Hop.” Nobody I knew ever appeared on it. Where did they get these kids? Did they hire professional teenagers from other towns? Nobody I knew dressed as cool or danced as well as the kids on “The Hop,” and there was a sinking feeling, on those long-ago afternoons in front of the TV, that the parade had passed me by.”

The story in John Waters’ 1988 film “Hairspray” revolves around that era and the youth with that same feeling. The time is set in 1962 in Baltimore, where a show called “The Corny Collins Show” is really popular among every teenager who wants to be on it. Ebert described, “The kids on Corny’s show are great dancers with hair piled in grotesque mounds atop their unformed little faces.”

They are “popular.” Ebert said, “They are on the Council, a quasi-democratic board of teenagers who advise Corny on matters of music and supervise auditions for kids who want to be on the show.”

One girl really wants to be on the show is Tracy (TV show host Ricki Lake), who is overweight, but can dance better than Amber (Collen Fitzpatrick), who is slim. Tracy dances in front of her TV and knows every step and is abided in this dream by her parents, played by Jerry Stiller and Divine (the late singer and drag queen).

The story is all about Tracy trying to win a talent show so she can be a part of the Council and how Amber and her motivated parents (Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry) try to stop her. Ebert noted, “It is some kind of commentary on the decivilizing ‘80s that Stiller and Divine and Bono and Harry, who would have qualified as sideshow exhibits in the real ‘60s, look in the context of this movie like plausible parents.”

The supporting cast has so many different eccentrics, like Pia Zadora as a “Beatnik Chick) (which it was she was listed as in the credits). Ebert said, “If nothing else is worth the price of admission to this movie, perhaps you will be persuaded by the prospect of Zadora reading from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.”” The movie has a very important message in it: “The Corny Collins Show” is racially segregated, and Tracy and her black friends help to integrate it, breaking into Corny Collins day at their local amusement park. Ebert said, “But basically the movie is a bubble-headed series of teenage crises and crushes, alternating with historically accurate choreography of such forgotten dances as the Madison and the Roach.”

Ebert continued, “The movie probably has the most to say to people who were teenagers in the early ‘60s, but they are, I suppose, the people least likely to see this movie. It also will appeal to today’s teenagers, who will find that every generation has its own version of Corny Collins, and its own version of the Council, designed to make you feel like a worthless reject on the trash heap of teenage history.” If there is a moral here, is that John Waters, who probably could not get a spot on the Council, actually did, and made it through to release the movie.

The 2007 remake of “Hairspray” is actually fun. Ebert credited, “There's a lot of craft and slyness lurking beneath the circa-1960s goofiness. 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).” It starts right away with Tracy Turnblad, played by Nikki Blonsky, an overweight spirited girl, whose solid joy is a pleasure to watch throughout. Good morning, Baltimore! She sings, as she hops all around town where she’s very popular and loved, even the garbagemen who give her a lift when she misses her bus. Ebert describes, “She's like a free-lance cheerleader.”

At school she joins with best friend Penny Pingleton, played by Amanda Bynes, whose name looks very similar to Penny Singleton, who played Dagwood’s Blondie. They really want school to end since time seems to drag really slow to dismissal time, so they can rush home and watch “The Corny Collins Show,” the popular teenage dance show. Back then, every channel had a show like that. Ebert noted, “Eventually Dick Clark plowed them under with "American Bandstand." I miss their freshness and naivete.”

Corny, played by James Marsden, is rightly named, as he controls a group of Popular Kids who call themselves his Council. Tracy wants to be on the Council. The center stage and leader of the Council is Amber Von Tussle (Brittany Snow), whose mother Wilma (Michelle Pfeifer) controls the channel and pushes an all-white rule for the show, except for the monthly Negro Day captained by Maybelle (Queen Latifah), owner of a record shop.

All of this is from the original 1988 John Waters film, which skyrocketed Ricki Lake’s career, and from the Broadway musical made from the Waters movie, but it’s still a joy to watch the third time. It’s a little more innocent than Waters would have made it, but he plays his part by making a cameo appearance as a flasher (look fast and you will spot Ricki Lake and Pia Zadora). The story is about Tracy’s automatic courtesy as she fights to integrate the show, damaging her chance to get on the Council.

As usual, Edna, Tracy’s mother, needs to be played by a man in drag: Divine in the original, Harvey Fierstein in the musical, and this time, John Travolta, who is wearing a fat suit but still dances like his character in “Saturday Night Fever.” Wilbur, Edna father, is played by Christopher Walken, who must be wearing a wig that he got from his store, named “Hardy Har Har,” and sells pranks and trinkets. Ebert admitted, “Oh, how I miss the Whoopie Cushion.”

The plot moves forward while fixing one part of Baltimore racism, and what the best thing is is that some of the large problems get talked about in their soundtrack. Ebert said, “Tracy is sent to detention one day and learns a whole new style of dancing from the black students there, and takes it to TV, reminding me of the days when TV preachers thought Elvis was the spawn of Satan. Now they look like him. Call in today for your "free" healing water.”

However, the point is not the story but the energy. Ebert said, “Without somebody like Nikki Blonsky at the heart of the movie, it might fall flat, but everybody works at her level of happiness, including her teen contemporaries Zac Efron, Taylor Parks and Elijah Kelley (the last two Maybelle's children), and the usual curio-shop window full of peculiar adults (Jerry Stiller, who played Wilbur in the 1988 movie, and Paul Dooley).”

You know the story, you’ve seen the original and heard everything about the musical, and you think you know what will happen. However, the movies looks like it is happening at the precise time, and its only problem as a movie taking place during a serious time is that there aren’t enough Studebakers in it.

Definitely check out the original and the remake. I like the remake better. I actually think this movie was better for Travolta and Pfeiffer, who starred in the “Grease” movies, which I’m not a fan of. We’ll get to that eventually. However, still, these movies are right for Black History Month and really tell about a time that really did happen. It was based on a true story, but I don’t recall the entire story it was about. Don’t miss your chance to see these movies.

Look out next week where we look at more reviews in “Black History Movie Month.”