This year saw a prime example of Hollywood botching: I wasn't wild about Hairspray on stage, but an inexperienced director mucked up just about everything that made it work.
The "adults," John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken and Queen Latifah all have embarrassing and/or underwhelming moments. Edna was the creation of Divine and amplified by the basso camp-purveyor Harvey Fierstein for the musical. Why cast Travolta and force him to wear a fat-suit that limits his mobility? I'll never understand this. He's weird, not humorous, and seems to have been going in the exact wrong direction, by trying to make her a real woman. If that's the right direction, they could have gotten a real woman. And how embarrassing that Michelle Pfeiffer can't wrest a single laugh out of seducing the oddly sexless Christopher Walken.
What remains are the convoluted story, which switches racial prejudice for anti-fat prejudice as if they're on an equal plain, and those songs, which are frequently witless, pointless, or just uninventive
But let's just talk about the rat for a moment. On stage, Tracy sings about the rats at her feet and a robotic rodent does these cute moments and it's successfully charming in an oddball way. In the movie, there's a real rat, which doesn't dance or do anything particularly rat-like. Ick.
To see the praise heaped on this travesty was disconcerting indeed.