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Average User Score: 7 (30 sources)

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misty_hottie

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this is way better than the new one lets stick with this one!!!!!!

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Posted feb 17, 2008 5:26 am pt

MegStar14

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I loved this movie. It was so great and funny. I loved the dances. Amber was my fave character.

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Posted dec 8, 2007 10:52 am pt

Truth777

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There was a lot of singing in the movie, but I liked the point of it.

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Posted jul 26, 2007 3:44 am pt

jokipper

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This is one of director John Waters' tamest movies (in comparision to what came before it), but it seems a natural progression. Waters is obviously more interested in telling a story here than being outrageous just to be outrageous. It's the first...
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This is one of director John Waters' tamest movies (in comparision to what came before it), but it seems a natural progression. Waters is obviously more interested in telling a story here than being outrageous just to be outrageous. It's the first of Waters' really slick movies...no one can insult his technical skills anymore. But, there's plenty of oddball humor here, with the strange characters and the even stranger dances we see. By now, an another amazing change is taking place in the way that Waters makes his films. John Waters has no interest in being part of Hollywood, but parts of Hollywood want to be with John Waters...here we have Pia Zadora, Sonny Bono, Debbie Harry, and Jerry Stiller.
All-in-all, this is a fun, enjoyable movie...certainly like no other in my collection. It's still not mainstream (although it remains to be seen how well the remake does...it's hard for a veteran Waters fan to imagine such a thing...a remake!), as even Waters' tamest movies aren't for everybody, and this definitely feels like a Waters film, from start to finish. To the true Waters fan, he never sold out--he just grew as a filmmaker and went down paths that we never would have guessed, but should have known, that he would. And I enjoy this slight detour.

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Posted jul 13, 2007 4:14 pm pt

• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  90
  Not only Waters's best movie, but a crossover gesture that expands his appeal without compromising his vision one iota; Ricki Lake as the hefty young heroine is especially delightful.

  by Jonathan Rosenbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  90
  Hairspray is a deliriously fast and funny satire of the '60s that marks John Waters' best shot yet at mainstream audiences. [25 Feb 1988, p.1]

  by Kevin Thomas | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  88
  Controversial filmmaker John Waters finally hits his commercial stride in this film, parlaying his keen social observation and great compassion for society's outsiders into a colorful and engaging comedy full of dancing, music and heartfelt nostalgia.

  by Staff (Not Credited) | Read Full Review »
• [+] Empire
  
  80
  Thoroughly charming, and thoroughly deserving of its cult status.

  by Kim Newman | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  80
  The actors are best when they avoid exaggeration and remain weirdly sincere. That way, they do nothing to break the vibrant, even hallucinogenic spell of Mr. Waters's nostalgia.

  by Janet Maslin | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  80
  It seems inappropriate to call ick noir auteur Waters a breath of fresh air. But, amid the stale odor of our man-made, musty, Muzaked lives, he's a welcome gust of Renuzit.

  by Desson Howe | Read Full Review »
• [+] Wall Street Journal
  
  80
  The strangest thing about his latest picture, Hairspray, is how very sweet and cheerful it is. In his own weird way, Mr. Waters has captured the gleeful garishness of the early '60s, when high-school girls wore demure bows in their ratted hair and deadened their lips with palest pink lip gloss -- and believed that racial harmony was inevitable if teens of all flavors could dance together on TV. [25 Feb 1988, p.1]

  by Julie Salamon | Read Full Review »
• [+] Time
  
  80
  See Hairspray. It's light and airy, but it will stick around: the first aerosol movie. [29 Feb 1988, p.101]

  by Richard Corliss | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  75
  Basically the movie is a bubble-headed series of teenage crises and crushes, alternating with historically accurate choreography of such forgotten dances as the Madison and the Roach.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  75
  From its opening shot-of little girls with huge hairdos-Hairspray is a relentlessly silly, crude and hilarious lampoon of modes and mores in teenage America, 1962. But it's also more than that. By closing credits, it has made some provocative observations about the influence of rock music on race relations in America, about how the '50s became the '60s and about the volatility of fashion and politics. [26b Feb 1988, p.F]

  by Johanna Steinmetz | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  Hairspray is definitely self-congratulatory, like the message movies it aims to spoof. But there's a sweet morality mixed with the camp clumsiness of this nostalgic goof. Waters couldn't care less about the subtleties of plot or character. He writes and directs the way a kid finger paints. As usual, he's gathered a tantalizing cast from the so-out-they're-in crowd. [26 Feb 1988, p.b1]

  by Rita Kempley | Read Full Review »
• [+] USA Today
  
  63
  If Hairspray is clean and sweet, don't cry sellout. Taken as a pointed burlesque of a serious racial issue, this is what Spike Lee's School Daze should have been. It's also a PG (for "Pretty Darn Good'') simply on its own.

  by Mike Clark | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  50
  There are some nice things to be said about Hairspray, the John Waters movie which opened over the weekend, but not enough to explain all you've been hearing about it. It's a fairly run-of-the-mill teenage dance movie, set in Baltimore in the early '60s, with a certain oddball humor that only occasionally lifts it out of its class. [29 Feb 1988, p.F3]

  by Mick LaSalle | Read Full Review »