Major Disappointment. I enjoyed the original Hairspray in '88, thought the stage version was forgettable, but this new one...I actually had a hard time sitting through it. First off, the camera work is wooden and the music numbers suffer as a result. Everything just felt so flat and uninspired. And then, John Travolta,...wrong! wrong! wrong! His singing voice was terrible and his Edna could barely move her face, she wasn't a woman, she was a plasticine sack that may as well have been a mannequin. I just kept wondering why there wasn't a "real" drag queen playing the role or a campy guy or even a talented & heavy "real" woman playing Edna (Bette Midler?). And the songs themselves, just noisy, unclever and not something I'll ever want to buy or sing-a-long to. I remember hearing all sorts of hype about this movie when it came out that it had really hit it out of the ballpark, I just want to know how much money the producers spent to generate that kind of phony buzz. Everyone I talked to thought it was terrible. Michelle Pfeiffer can't sing either.
