HAIRSPRAY
A new film by John Waters
A film review by Peter van der Linden
Copyright 1988 Peter van der Linden
Film director John Waters has always pioneered his own distinctive brand of American "cinema verite," but his latest work HAIRSPRAY marks a radical departure from his earlier style. Any film which is directed by John Waters has to be interpreted in its wider context; without such a perspective the imagery can appear unusually frank. HAIRSPRAY represents a big (and I think unfortunate) step towards mainstream Hollywood.
Ostensibly about a 1960's teenage dance TV show, HAIRSPRAY is based around a formative period in Waters' own teen years. As his recent book explains, Waters has always felt vaguely alienated from society, and he values every opportunity in his films to confront society with itself. Waters' films have always centered, some would say obsessively, on aspects of the human condition which polite people usually do not discuss in public.
HAIRSPRAY is different, shunning overtness for commercial appeal; it can be loosely characterized as a GREASE remake. The plot is elemental, concerning the triumph of good over evil, of substance over style, of character over the superficial. The casting is excellent, placing such untalented no-hopers as Debbie Harry, Pia Zadora, and Sonny Bono in undemanding roles well-suited to their abilities. Longtime Waters fans will be treated to a double appearance of Divine; in the normal housewife role; and most surprisingly, dressed as a man, realistically depicting a 300-pound redneck TV station manager. And look out for Waters' own cameo appearance as a manic psychiatrist, wielding such essential aids to modern medical diagnosis as the spinning disk, and the cattle-prod!
Directors often become boring or mawkish when they film autobiographically. For example, consider the last half-dozen Woody Allen films. It's because they wrongly assume that the audience will love the subject as much as they do. Waters veers near to committing this error here, and it is unlikely that HAIRSPRAY will be well-received by the same people who revered his earlier works such as PINK FLAMINGOS or FEMALE TROUBLE. It just doesn't have the inventiveness of POLYESTER.
Lacking the ferocity of Fassbinder, or the triteness of Andy Warhol, but sharing the sexual ambivalence of both, John Waters has for the past 20 years been an "enfant terrible" within the American film industry. With this latest film, he is declaring his future direction to be unashamedly Hollywood-bound. But it's a long way from Baltimore to Sunset Boulevard, and unless Waters is careful, he's liable to end up where he's headed.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews