A teenage girl living in Baltimore in the early 1960s dreams of appearing on a popular TV dance show.
Directors: Kenny Leon, Alex Rudzinski
Stars: see casts below.
Jerry Mitchell ... choreographer (lots of dancing; surprised only 1 chor. credit)
disc arrived recently; runtime is 1h 53min. Decided to purchase sight unseen because of HF as Edna and MS as hubby. ('07 purchased for J.Travolta as Edna and C.Walken as hubby). HF also wrote the teleplay here, and makes a good Edna; more like Divine than JT.
19 songs in the Soundtracks, including 1 reprise; all Music by Marc Shaiman, Lyrics Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. The '07 film has 30 songs, and runtime 1h 57min. (Actually lined up the songs in a spreadsheet. The '07 Soundtracks list reprises separately, and has 5 duplicates.) One title is new here: Velma's Revenge. Five song titles in '07 do not appear in '16's list.
(Synopsis writer ignored the fight against prejudice, which is central to the story.)
Corny Collins sings/dances a lot here; don't remember that from '07. DH does a great job; he also starred in Make Your Move (2013), 6-.
Link, GC, starred in both Teen Beach films: Teen Beach Movie (2013), 7+ and Teen Beach 2 (2015), 7-
AG gets to break out of the Penny constraints at the end of the show. Don't remember that from prior versions, but this one is too big a star.
JH was well-utilized and enjoyable.
Each version has something different that I enjoy.
Prior:
Hairspray (1988), 7 (Music, not Musical)
Hairspray (2007), 7 (Musical)
Casts in order of '07 film:
Divine :: John Travolta :: Harvey Fierstein ... Edna Turnblad
Debbie Harry :: Michelle Pfeiffer :: Kristin Chenoweth ... Velma Von Tussle
Jerry Stiller :: Christopher Walken :: Martin Short ... Wilbur Turnblad
Leslie Ann Powers :: Amanda Bynes :: Ariana Grande ... Penny Pingleton
Shawn Thompson :: James Marsden :: Derek Hough ... Corny Collins
Ruth Brown :: Queen Latifah :: Jennifer Hudson ... Motormouth Maybelle
Vitamin C :: Brittany Snow :: Dove Cameron ... Amber Von Tussle
Michael St. Gerard :: Zac Efron :: Garrett Clayton ... Link Larkin
Clayton Prince :: Elijah Kelley :: Ephraim Sykes ... Seaweed
Jo Ann Havrilla :: Allison Janney :: Andrea Martin ... Prudy Pingleton
Ricki Lake :: Nikki Blonsky :: Maddie Baillio ... Tracy Turnblad
Cyrkle Milbourne :: Taylor Parks :: Shahadi Wright Joseph ... Little Inez
Alan J. Wendl :: Jerry Stiller :: Sean Hayes ... Mr. Pinky
Sonny Bono :: none ... Franklin von Tussle
Josh Charles :: none ... Iggy
Rated 7.0 (2,414)
distr. NBC, dir. Leon & Rudzinski; 7
