Utterly satisfying, as charming as you would hope it would be. Haven't seen it on the stage, but ya damned skippy I saw the original movie. I really think that this new trend of remaking a movie on Broadway, then making the Broadway show into a movie is funny. Looking forword to seeing The Wedding Singer and Legally Blonde, even though the original ones are less than ten years old.
In some ways this is better than the 1988 original, as all the John Water's scuzziness has been smoothed over (even though it was PG, you can't escape the underlining Divine Madness in all of Water's films). This is certainly the best musical I've seen since Chicago, mostly because the director, Adam Shankman (who is a great director who's made some shit films: Bringing Down the House, Cheaper By the Dozen 2, and The Pacifier), is like Rob Marshall in that he understands how a musical should work on film. Shankman's a choreographer and has marvelous energy and timing.
Nikky Blonsky is adorable- a star is born. Amanda Bynes is cute, too, which's nice because I've always wanted to like her, but she's always been in terrible tweenage pictures. Everyone's memorable, actually. Michelle Pfeiffer hasn't been as sexy since she was Catwoman, but it's a shame that now she's found her middle-age nitch by playing villains. Christopher Walken's sweetly deadpan. The bell of the ball, Travolta, is actually not a spectacular as he should have been. Good, but they would have had better movie if they'd just asked Harvey Fierstein to do it.
Side-note: For those who hadn't heard, GLAAD complained about the casting of Travolta because Scientology aparently believes that homosexuality is something that can be cured by joining Scientology and eating lots of vitamins. I don't think that this is fair, because Travolta has made no negative comments about gays, and it's not right to condemn a man just because of his (nutjob) beliefs.
