Hairspray (2007)

Let me begin this review like I begin most of my best ones-by being mean. If you don’t like this movie-heck, if you don’t love this movie, you are a Terminator, and your mission in life is to suck the fun out of it. Because this little gem right here, based off of the Broadway musical based off of the John Waters film of the same name, is nothing but pure unleaded fun for 2 hours. Telling an alternate tale of the Civil Rights movement (yes, your history teachers lied to you. It wasn’t Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X; it was a singing chubby white girl. AMERICA!) through song and dance, Hairspray is the tale of Tracy Turnblad (newcomer Nikki Blonsky), a girl in the 60s who, with her best friend Penny (the always wonderful Amanda Bynes), dreams of nothing more than being a dancer on The Corny Collins Show, a local dance show run by Corny Collins (James Marsden), the fun and awesome super-amazing guy, and Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is the exact opposite, and is super racist. On the show are Velma’s daughter Amber (Brittany Snow), and Link (Zac Efron…in a good movie…where he isn’t terrible? GASP!), among other people. Now, even that would only be a packed enough film, but the film also deals with the relationship with Tracy’s mother and father (carrying the tradition of the John Waters film and the musical, Tracy’s mother is played by a man in drag, this time John Travolta, and his/her husband, played by Christopher Walken. There seriously is a scene where John Travolta and Christopher Walken sing a love song to each other. There is a God.), and the fact that people were still super racist in the 60s, as Tracy encounters a group of African-American dancers including Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) and his mother Maybelle (Queen Latifah). Despite the fact that the plot can be sort of silly and convoluted, it doesn’t matter. This movie is nothing but pure unleaded fun for two full hours. This is truly one of those movies that I watch when I am having a terrible day, and watch it and love it. The songs are hyper-energetic, the jokes are hilarious, and the movie is so dang bright, you have to smile during it. Now, this isn’t a feel-good movie like (500) Days of Summer, which does so in an odd way (at least for me), it’s just so much fun that it’s purely contagious. This movie is contagious with fun, and everybody needs to see it. You. You need to see it. And if you don’t like it, you’re a Terminator.
9/10