Hairspray

Adam Shankman directs and choreographs, and he works from the Broadway musical rather than the 1988 John Waters film the musical came out of. The screenplay sands down the stage camp: Tracy is not arrested here, so the jailhouse number goes with her and the segregation plot loses its hardest scene. Maybelle’s march is repositioned so that I Know Where I’ve Been underscores it, which leaves one song carrying the serious register alone. Baltimore is the setting, not the location. The production was built on stages in Toronto and Hamilton, and the real city appears only in the descent that opens the film. More than 1,100 people auditioned for Tracy; it went to Nikki Blonsky, 17 at the time and with no professional credits. John Travolta plays Edna in a fat suit that needed 4 hours of makeup before he could face a camera, and Shankman modelled her dancing on the hippo ballerinas in Fantasia. It took 3 Golden Globe nominations, for musical or comedy picture and for Blonsky and Travolta, plus a BAFTA nomination for makeup and hair. A good fit if you accept that segregation is settled here by winning a dance contest and you came for the choreography. Not for anyone who wants Tracy to pay for the protest, since this version drops the arrest.