A totally over-the-top film that has a noble theme - Hairspray

John Waters's 1988 film, Hairspray (which has gone on to have a long life as a musical), is a double-nostalgia trip: An '80s style look at the '60s (set in 1963) in Baltimore, focused on a group of working-class teens from Baltimore row houses whose life centers on a teenage-dance show, modeled on American Bandstand, on a local TV station. Everything about this movie is over the top: the bizarre-looking characters, their cartoonish behavior, the corny dialog, the garish coloring and lighting, the lack of nuance (characters are either good and with-it or evil Luddites), the outrageous hair, the campy costumes. And yet, or rather, as a result, the movie is entirely entertaining (we watched on the great site Filmstruck, but it's a film that, because of its hilarity, clearly plays better to a large audience rather than a home theater). The film has a noble theme, as well, developed in two plot line: the acceptance of someone not conventionally attractive, a pudgy and overweight Rikki Lake in the lead role, selected as the most popular dancer on the program - and she gets the handsome guy!; and, more significant, the characters fight, successfully, for the integration of the dance show. Till then, black teens had their own record shop and a one-day-a-month "negro day" on the show; thanks to the persistence of a lot of the kids, black and white, the doors open and the show is integrated at the end: These were real battles fought in Baltimore in the early 1960s, as I can attest. Is it a great movie? Probably not - but it's entertaining and feel-good and, hey, you can dance to it (thanks to good soundtrack of 1963-era dance music, white and black, and a catchy title song). The dancing is good, very coordinated and staged, and very much of its era; there's a hint, in one awkward scene when the kids wander into a "beatnik" art studio, of the world of sound and art that was soon to arrive, but this film celebrates the innocence of an earlier era while recognizing the ever-present tensions and inequalities (notable in particular in a scene involving the "special education" class at the high school) that permeated life, then and now.