| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
A.O. Scott,
The New York Times |
Hairspray |
"What is missing from Hairspray is anything beyond the faintest whisper of camp. [...] Perhaps wisely Mr. Travolta does not try to duplicate the outsize, deliberately grotesque theatricality of Divine's performance or to mimic the Mermanesque extravagance of Harvey Fierstein's Broadway turn, choosing instead to tackle the role of Edna as an acting challenge.
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What A.O. Scott neglects to mention in a friendly and jovial review about what is no doubt a friendly and jovial film, is that a fat John Travolta in drag skipping and dancing in a non-camp way with — of all people — Christopher bloody Walken just might signify the end of days. Don't say you weren't warned.
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Nathan Lee,
Village Voice |
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry |
"Geeky Jews are totally my type, but Sandler's never suited my taste in comedy. His enormous popularity has always seemed one of those straight things I'll never understand, like the widespread delusion that Scarlett Johansson can act. Having recently registered for domestic partnership with my geeky Jew (hi, Glen!). . . I approached 'the Adam Sandler gay-marriage movie' with a little curiosity and a lot of baggage." |
There are all sorts of good points and linguistic gems in this review ("homosexual intifada"!) but let's focus on what's really important: a big mazal tov Nathan Lee and Glen!
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Armond White,
New Your Press |
Hairspray |
"Originally, Waters' Hairspray was a hipster's retort to Back to the Future — the most brilliantly written American movie of the 1980s — yet never bested its out-front subversiveness. Instead, Waters complemented its pop-music irony (casting Ruth Brown and Debbie Harry the way Back to the Future invoked Chuck Berry); using cultural totems as part of realpolitik. To convert Hairspray into Broadway's commercial strictures undermines Waters' achievement." |
Never predictable, Armond White is being relaxed enough to sing the well-deserved praises of Back to the Future — a brilliant movie about American late '50s nostalgia if there ever was one, which come to think about it does illustrate why the Hairspray remake doesn't quite go the distance.
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Peter Marks,
Washington Post |
Hairspray |
"Boy, can that 380-pound woman bust a move! Oh, wait, of course, that's no distaff Leviathan shimmying her way down a Baltimore byway. That's the lithe-even-in-latex John Travolta, portraying economy-size Edna Turnblad in a genially peppy new movie version of the musical Hairspray. Though rubbery mountains of artificial flesh turn Travolta's facial features to virtually unreadable mush." |
Why do so many critics assume that those mountains of flesh on John Travolta's Edna are artificial? Anyone who caught Travolta on The Ellen De Generes Show last year knows that he can still get down on the dance floor, but skinny he is not.
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Dana Stevens,
Slate.com |
Hairspray |
"Director Adam Shankman's adaptation of the stage play based on John Waters' 1988 cult film preserves little of Waters' signature yuckiness. (Michelle Pfeiffer's character never pops her daughter's zits, for example, nor does the heroine perform her final number in a pink gown patterned with giant roaches.)" |
And there you have it; the remake lacks zits and roaches.
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