Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad teaches 1962 Baltimore a thing or two about integration after landing a spot on a local TV dance show. (imdb.com)

The John Waters Ricki Lake original of Hairspray was fun, but this 2007 version with Travolta, Pfeiffer and Walken was damed fun, and damned good acting all around. The directing was perfect. What made Hairspray 2007 much more enjoyable for me than the original is that the writing was so smart and updated given the racial content. You never felt uneasy to laugh or not laugh. It was smart tongue-in-cheek writing, with trully remarkable acting especially from John Travolta whom I never really cared for before.

Hairspray is definitely a movie I want on DVD and which I can watch numerous times over.

• Directing: [rating:5/5]
• Acting: [rating:5/5]
• Casting: [rating:4/5]
• Cinematography: [rating:5/5]
• Writing: [rating:5/5]
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