Super-size fun

This film is fun. It is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It might be the most fun you can have with your clothes on or, if you have been married a good while, then with them off. John Travolta as Mrs Edna Turnblad is fun. Christopher Walken as Mr Wilbur Turnblad is riotous fun. Newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad, the big girl with the big hair and the big heart, is fun and she’s a terrific dancer. From its opening number — the pounding showtune ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ — this film leaps at you with such joy and vigour and generosity you cannot reject it. It pins you down and has its way with you, clothes on or off. It doesn’t care. It is quite ruthless in this way.

OK, some have been sniffy about this version of Hairspray already. It’s not, they say, as original as John Waters’s original film. Well, why would it be? This is not the original. The original film was released in 1988, became a Broadway musical, and has now been made into a film again. So what? Has Shakespeare only ever been done the once? Pride and Prejudice? The Hound of the Baskervilles? And have any been as gloriously fast-paced, candy-coloured, camp and funny as this? Have any included John Travolta attired in flame-coloured chiffon and shaking his mighty, albeit prosthetic booty? This is a film that has no agenda beyond pure, plus-sized entertainment. Yes, it does affect to have a message about acceptance and racial prejudice — it is set in the non-integrated America of the 1960s — but it is possibly more the pastiche of a message movie rather than a message movie per se, so I don’t think it’s necessary to get hung up on all that.

The soul of the movie is, of course, Tracy Turnblad, the chubby Baltimore teenager who has three ambitions: to dance; to make out with the best-looking boy in town; to appear on the local TV dance show, The Corney Collins Show.