Hairspray

Liked this review.

I particularly like the Travolta slam:

Which leads me to the third point—who the heck thought of casting John Travolta as Edna Turnblad! Every time he comes on the scene all you can think about is “Oh my god that’s John Travolta in drag and in a fat suit!” It’s stunt casting that’s so distracting that it pulls you out of the story. Now Waters has done his share of stunt casting but it was always slyly appropriate–like having Pia Zadora and The Cars’ Ric Ocasek as a Beatnik chick and cat. That was funny. As for Edna Turnblad, Divine owned role and was sheer perfection. No one could fill his shoes. On stage, Harvey Fierstein at least had the right sense of fun and a ridiculously gravely voice that he refused to cover up even though he was playing a woman. The problem with Travolta is that he’s a handsome Hollywood celebrity trying to milk laughs from the fact that he’s making himself fat and female. There’s a constant sense of wink-wink-nudge-nudge look at me I’m acting and I’m getting laughs from frumping my gorgeous self up.

And to make matters worse, the film changes Edna’s character from the Waters’ film so that she’s some kind of agoraphobic housewife who hasn’t come out of her home in ten years because she thinks she’s fat. Travolta’s Edna is crushed by the opinion of the sexy Velma who implies that she’s overweight and shouldn’t be eating an ice cream sundae. You’d never catch Divine crying over her weight or wondering what some establishment slut thought of her. Hell no. There’s nothing greater than the scene in Waters’ film where Divine’s plus size Edna and daughter Tracy (played by Ricki Lake) go strutting down the Baltimore street in their Hefty Hideaway frocks. There’s no sense of apology in them–they’re big, bold and beautiful–and they boast a refreshing bravado that only an outsider thumping his/her nose at the establishment can muster. Plus Travolta’s face looks like its been pulled tightly back so he looks oddly younger than usual, and he has a strange accent that often makes him sound like Mike Myers. All in all, this Edna is a disappointment.