Life’s right when it’s white in downtown Baltimore. And there’s the thing about this film of the musical of the film Hairspray: it may look asinine on the outside, but scratch the surface and John Waters’ faecal nastiness is still there. Take the opening number, Good Morning Baltimore in which the unstoppably cheerful Tracy Turnblad welcomes a new day like she’s stepped out of the Mickey Mouse club. In reality she side-steps rats while Waters flashes on the pavement. Which is not to say that Hairspray is a big-message musical-satire, because it isn’t. What it is, is a high-octane fizz-fest that hangs off a couple of basic morals – live your dreams and do the right thing. It’s about as deep as Dreamgirls but twice the fun.

In 1962, plump Tracy aches to be a dancer on the Corny Collins TV show. She auditions and, to the horror of the show’s stick-thin, segregationist, witch of a producer, wins. But then Tracy learns about Negro Day when black kids join the show once a month. “I wish every day was Negro day,” she pines. Before you choke on chlorofluorocarbon, Tracy, her XXXXL mother and cute-as-a-button boyfriend bring race relations to Baltimore. Cue music.

In fact, cue several songs as Hairspray stretches the requirements of musical convention in a film jam-packed with Wittman/Shaiman’s razor-sharp, toe-tapping ditties. As sung by an irrepressible cast, they propel the film through its relentlessly upbeat paces before Shankman brings the house down in a show-stopping finale. Oscar is in the audience. Granted, John Travolta’ star turn as Edna Turnblad is distracting and the production tries a little too hard to please. Yet Hairspray has never reached beyond its station. It’s a very big, very bold dance-a-thon that could do for the 60’s what Grease did for the 50s. It’s the film equivalent of M&M’s – brightly coloured, full of nuts and guaranteed to give you such a sugar rush you’ll be reaching for aspirin on the way home.

// COLIN FRASER