Is it just me....

... or is there something grimly ironic in the fact that in a movie about accepting and empowering the marginalized, one of the main characters is played not by a large actress (like there are a lot of roles for really large older actresses) or a transvestite (a la Divine) or even an out gay man (Harvey, honey, we miss you!) but by a very successful straight white male actor in a fat suit and drag?

However, that said, I did enjoy Hairspray quite a lot. Nikki Blonsky was wonderful, and deserved much higher billing than she got. The supporting performances were uniformly good to very good as well: I have a particular fondness for Amanda Bynes (and the girl can sing!) as Tracy's air-head friend Penny and Allison Janney as Penny's bizarro fundamentalist Christian mother. And John Travolta and Christopher Walken had chemistry as Mr. & Mrs. Turnblad.

But the best? John Waters had a cameo... ( very minor spoiler )

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