ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 6/23/2008
Posts: 14,330
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No John Travolta as Edna, I'm not in. I have a lot of beefs with the changes from stage to movie, but I think the changes they made to Edna, making her less bawdy and making her more demure and insecure, made her much more interesting and easier to relate with. It's so expected for a drag role to be outlandish and over-the-top, so it was nice to see some subtlety brought to the part.
I was so excited for the first movie. The original John Waters non-musical version with Ricki Lake is a classic and one of my all-time favorite movies. I'm a fairly big fan of the stage adaptation as well. Shankman and company messed up Hairspray by not being faithful enough to the Broadway production and John Water's film. Their biggest flaw, in my opinion (aside from removing the scenes where Tracy is arrested and sent to jail for protesting), was deciding to alter the story so that Inez, a fairly insignificant character, wins "Miss Teenage Hairspray" and not Tracy, as was the case in the first two incarnations of Hairspray. I imagine they thought it would impart a good message about the importance of integration and equal rights if they changed the story so that an African-American character is triumphant and is able to overcome obstacles in racist 1960s culture, and to a certain extent it is. However, they made a mistake by placing very little focus on Inez throughout the movie and not building a case for her so that viewers could ultimately root for her and feel satisfied by her win. By changing the story so that Inez wins, I think they go past teaching an important message about tolerance, and delve into a very preachy, "right is right" sort of territory. It's much more logical and satisfying, albeit predictable, to keep the story as is and give Tracy the title considering she is the character the audience has bonded with the most. It still would have imparted the same theme of tolerance and equality since Tracy seems to be the movie's foremost crusader for integration, and is in some ways also secluded from society (not because of the color of her skin, because of her weight). Furthermore, the story goes to great lengths to build up a rivalry between Amber and Tracy, but it never pays off, because in Shankman's version, Tracy is only the victor due to her association with the integration movement to which Amber is so strongly opposed.
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