Hairspray

Hairspray (1988) is John Waters's strangest film because it is his most normal one. A director known until then for going as far as possible made a comedy open to family audiences and put racial segregation inside it. Baltimore, 1962. Tracy Turnblad is a heavy set high school student who dreams of getting onto a local dance show. She gets on, becomes popular, and then notices something: the Black teenagers are only allowed to dance once a month, on a separate day. She sets out to change it. Waters never delivers this as a lesson. The film is full of hairstyles, dancing and false eyelashes, and the segregation sits inside all of that. Divine plays Tracy's mother, and this was the last film. Divine died three weeks after it opened. It later became a Broadway musical, which became another film in 2007. This original is not a musical. The songs are real recordings from the period. Good for: eighties American independent film, light comedy, sixties music, and anyone wanting to try John Waters without going to his extremes. Less good for: racism is depicted in the language of the era and some scenes are uncomfortable. Anyone looking for Waters at his most transgressive will not find it here.