A friend of mine got "Hairspray" netflix, I found out last week -- she had seen the musical with her daughter, who's a huge fan of Zac Efron -- it was a smart decision to cast him in the remake; it's drawing in the pre-teen "High School Muscial" crowd, it seems -- and so I came over with a six-pack and some whiskey to watch it.
Overall, I was surprised at how much necking and ass-grabbing was in the original, as well as how many ugly kids you have who are trying to imitate the cool kids on the dance show (both of which were cleansed from the musical). It's camp at how cool the cool kids are and how the cute guy Link sprays his hair and closes his eyes and fantasy-tongues the air during the opening credits, and on top of that you get this sense of dingy parochialism since it's just Baltimore even for the cool kids, but beyond that there's this feeling that somehow it works and has life because of the spirit of the music and the dancing. I was mesmerized at all of the dance scenes.
It turns out that my friend's secret favorite movie is "Valley of the Dolls", so we watched that afterwards. I was shocked.
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2 comments:
Wait. Had you never seen the original?
I had seen the original, but years ago. This was the first time watching it in a long time.
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