Hairspray (8 out of 10)

When Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan started adapting John Waters' 1988 comedy Hairspray for the stage, a hundred musical producers probably slapped their foreheads in frustration. Of course! Rather than re-re-re-vamping Grease, why not take a story set in the early 60s, all about a girl who wants to dance on an American Bandstand-style show, and throw some original songs in it to supplant the occasional "Mashed Potato" and "Do the Bird"? It's got a social conscience to boot? And one of the key characters is a drag queen? Broadway can, uh, probably handle that.

That musical adaptation of Hairspray was an enormous hit and a Tony winner just months after Chicago won its Oscar. It was inevitable that Hairspray would become the latest screen-to-stage-to-screen adaptation, hopefully a more successful one than the disappointing The Producers. And it is, largely because the songs are stronger, the script is tighter (it'd be hard to write a draggier third act than the one Mel Brooks gave his musical), and more than 1/4 of the key cast are actually singers or dancers.

Nikki Blonsky (a 19-year old newcomer) plays Tracy Turnblad, the role originated by the pre-diet Ricki Lake in Waters' film. From the second she appears onscreen, jumping out of bed, beaming into her mirror, shaking her well-upholstered torso in the street, we're rooting for her to win her life's goal and nab a spot on The Corny Collins Show. Tracy and her dim friend Penny (the cute, thin-voiced Amanda Bynes) race home from school to watch the hilariously vintage dance show featuring teen heartthrob Link Larkin (Zac Efron of High School Musical) and ice queen Amber Van Tussle (Brittany Snow of American Dreams). "Nice white kids who like to lead the way," the dancers sing. "And once a month we have our Negro Day!" But Turnblad is blind to the show's racism even when she auditions for an open spot. (One female dancer needs to take a vacation... for nine months.) Station manager Velma Van Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer, channeling Catwoman) was going to cut her off the audition list for her weight, anyway--when Turnblad chirps that she believes in integration, it's back to high school and daydreaming.

Lucky for Turnblad, she's a lousy student and she gets sent to detention. There she discovers the school's black population, crafting dance moves that put the vanilla Corny Collins cast to shame. Corny himself (James Marsden, a.k.a. Cyclops) spots her using the moves at a dance and brings her on the show. Tracy's parents are thrilled, especially mom Edna (John Travolta), a hefty housewife who didn't think there was any place for "girls like us" on TV. As Tracy gets more popular, the black kids get bolder, and the Van Tussles get more paranoid, it boils over into a mess of protests, daring escapes, and a final dance-off at the Miss Teenage Hairspray pageant.

See? I got giddy just describing all that. This is a relentlessly fun movie with visible flaws that I, at least, was happy enough to overlook. Director Adam Shankman (A Walk to Remember) doesn't know what to do with some of the dances? Tracy Turnblad isn't the same interesting character she was in 1988? The stupidest characters are the ones attracted to black dudes? Whatever, whatever: We still have clever songs and musical-smart dialogue and Christopher Walken professing his love to John Travolta.

Oh, about Travolta. I started off the movie loathing what he was doing with his character. Travolta is controversial for two reasons. One, Scientology has lots of... issues about gay rights, and he's a Scientologist. Two, he's one of those actors who's always rumored to be gay and way, way overcompensates to squelch those rumors. So filling out a role originated by Divine and taken up by Harvey Fierstein you have a guy who refuses to play the role for camp. He really acts like a woman, changing his voice into a weird bass on the mistaken theory that Baltimore is somewhere near Lake Minnetonka. It's really jarring but Edna has so many cute setpieces--her journey out of the house and into the zeitgeist is a huge plot point that wasn't there in 1988--that Travolta succeeds.

I came into the movie jaded, not expecting much (I'd just left Stardust because I couldn't pay attention over a noisy couple next to me) and I came away smiling.