Ricki Lake’s unselfconscious performance as the all-dancing, all-bouffant Tracy Turnblad is a joy, Debbie Harry makes a fabulous bigot, while Waters seems to delight in the many toe-tapping dance routines as well as his own deliciously arch dialogue.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 9, 2023

Hairspray shows that Baltimore is the natural home of twisted legends and gothic subversives: Edgar Allan Poe, Dr Hannibal Lecter … and John Waters.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 7, 2023

It is absurd and jolly, parodying not only the worst conventions of the teen film but also the Sixties social-conscience movie, with an anti-racist sub-plot.

| Dec 31, 2017

Perhaps Waters' best known movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2015

While it's corny by design, Hairspray also aims to get at something truthful, about the various kinds of prejudice [...] and how youthful optimism and music made a difference [...].

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 10, 2014

When Divine's Edna Turnblad is on-screen in the sleeveless dresses she's partial to, the movie has something like the lunacy of a W. C. Fields in drag.

| May 28, 2008

Thoroughly deserving of its cult status.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 16, 2007

Not only Waters's best movie, but a crossover gesture that expands his appeal without compromising his vision one iota; Ricki Lake as the hefty young heroine is especially delightful.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 16, 2007

John Waters' appreciation for the tacky side of life is in full flower in Hairspray, a slight but often highly amusing diversion about integration, big girls' fashions and music-mad teens in 1962 Baltimore.

| Jun 30, 2007

Waters' most hygienically commercial film is a Retro schlock-fancier's delight.

| Jun 24, 2006

The defining moment in the auteur's career-long dedication to lionizing Baltimore's misfit population.

| Original Score: A- | May 4, 2005

The actors are best when they avoid exaggeration and remain weirdly sincere. That way, they do nothing to break the vibrant, even hallucinogenic spell of Mr. Waters's nostalgia.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2003

The movie is a bubble-headed series of teenage crises and crushes, alternating with historically accurate choreography of such forgotten dances as the Madison and the Roach.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Waters writes warmth into his caricatures, lifting Hairspray above cartoon cult.

| Jan 1, 2000