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Saturday, July 14, 2007
As I've previously mentioned, Jeri and I got a chance to see the new Hairspray coming out next week (Review up sometime this next week) and quickly fell in love. This week we picked up the soundtrack and have been listening to it almost non-stop since, and looking forward to seeing it again next weekend.
The other day we found a copy of the original 1988 movie Hairspray on which the musical that the new movie musical is based on is based on (got that?) and picked it up for $7, since Jeri was a fan and used to rent it non-stop as a kid. I had never seen it and looked forward to popping it in and seeing where it all started. Another movie Jeri used to watch all the time was Crybaby (1989), a movie I used to catch on TBS late at night, but had never seen the whole thing. We decided since these were both directed by John Waters we would pick Cry Baby up as well and have a double feature.
Tonight on this Friday the 13th, we had our double feature. First up Hairspray:
Hairspray is the story of Tracy Turnblad, a fat girl from 1960's Baltimore who loves to dance, and her quest to get a spot on "the counsel" on a local access dance show. The movie focuses on the acceptance of those who are different both in size, and in color, as Traci and her friends fight to make the Corny Collins show integrated.
The movie didn't stand up to Jeri's memory, and truly is laughable, but it was cool to see where a lot of the songs from the musical came from. The acting is bad and the movie at as a whole is a bit of a mess, but it was good to see it once.
Cry Baby was definitely the better of the two movies. As corny as Hairspray, but it treats itself as such, which makes it so much more enjoyable. While Hairspray is a dance movie it's not really a musical, but here Waters makes his musical.
The movie is about Cry Baby (Johnny Depp) a Drape (Juvenile Delinquent) who falls for a Square girl (Think punks and preps today) His love leads him to more trouble than he's ever been in, eventually landing him in jail. The movie jumps around a lot and really is quite strange, but its quirky and the music is fun, even if it's not really Depp singing.
Overall both of these movies are very strange, but in the end the one that was a musical to begin with was the better of the two. There's talk of a Cry Baby Broadway Musical version, and as much of an improvement as the new Hairspray is over the original, I can't wait to see what happens to this one.
