Director: Adam Shankman, PG, 107min

Stars: Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer

A tonic in a summer of overinflated “event” films, this retro musical reminds us that fun comes in all shapes and sizes.

Take the teen blimp Tracy Turnblad (Blonsky, above right with Travolta): she has a heart as big as a whale and the body to match. But when the music moves her, Tracy can shake her shimmy like the best of them. One day, she dreams, she will get the chance to strut her stuff with the local heart-throb, Link Larkin (Zac Efron) on Baltimore’s liveliest live cable music revue, The Corny Collins Show. This being 1962, she might just break down a few doors for racial integration while she’s at it.

Hairspray mark II comes to us by way of a successful musical makeover on the Great White Way, 19 years after “the Pope of Trash” John Waters first unleashed Ricki Lake on the world. Such treatment might seem excessive for what is essentially camped-up nostalgia, but it turns out that this unpretentious show has been bolstered by its big Broadway numbers without forfeiting its admirably broad sense of the ridiculous.

It is a minor league Dreamgirls, if you like, but pieties about pop’s role in the civil rights movement are easier to swallow when nobody is taking themselves too seriously. And to my ears at least, Marc Shaiman has done a better job of recapturing the vivacious early years of Motown rhythm and blues.

In his first musical in 25 years, Travolta dons a dress and a fat suit to play Tracy’s mother, Edna. Travolta’s thin singing voice is barely up to it, but this silly performance is also a great stunt, and we can’t take our eyes off him – a duet with Walken (Mr Turnblad) is something to cherish. Pfeiffer warbles, too, as the racist television producer. But there is no question that the real star of the show is the bubbly Blonsky.

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