The satiric edges of Hairspray have definitely been rounded off by now, but Travolta, although he doesn't make much of an impression in the film beyond his makeup and prosthetics (and, with his speak-singing, even less of one on the soundtrack), isn't really to blame for what director Adam Shankman calls the repurposing of the script and score, even though Travolta and another Hollywood name, Michelle Pfeiffer, have been handed a reprise of the song "Big, Blonde and Beautiful" that their characters did not do on-stage. It may be inevitable that a big-budget movie requires name stars and that those name stars require changes to beef up the parts they play and make them more sympathetic. It is some measure of the work's ongoing move toward the mainstream that in the 2007 movie musical based on the stage musical that was based on the first movie, John Travolta in a fat suit becomes Edna. The story was further softened in its conversion to a Broadway musical hit in 2002 with a raft of songs written and performed in the period style of 1962 pop/rock this time, openly gay actor/playwright Harvey Fierstein donned a dress to play the mother, his gravelly bass voice notwithstanding. Hairspray began life in 1988 as the first John Waters film to earn a PG rating, despite such subversive elements as the casting of cross-dressing Waters favorite Divine as Edna, the mother of the main character, tubby teenager Tracy Turnblad.
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