Travolta/Cage Ep. 44 -- World Trade Center/Hairspray (with Jason Bailey)

Film critic and author Jason Bailey (Fun City Cinema) hops on the Amtrak Acela Express with us, as we bounce between the Big Apple and Baltimore for a decidedly cacophonous double feature!

First up is Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, which trades in Stone’s signature conspiratorial thinking for an earnest, if narratively stagnant, disaster movie about the real-life tale of two Port Authority police officers (Nic Cage and Michael Peña) trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Cage does a lot with a little, treating the film as an acting exercise, but it’s as po-faced as something made so soon after the tragedies probably would be. Still, it’s an interesting, if heavy, glimpse at how we were processing such a historical horror through cinema.

Don’t worry, we’ve got a nice pastel palate-cleanser to follow in the form of Adam Shankman’s breezy, bright adaptation of the Broadway musical Hairspray! A re-do of John Waters’ most accessible picture, now filtered through Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s catchy tunes, Hairspray sees ebullient, full-figured teen Tracy Turnblad (a revelatory Nikki Blonsky) finding her voice and standing up for integration in 1960s Baltimore. But most interesting for our project is Travolta, revisiting his song-and-dance bonafides in drag and a fat suit as Tracy’s agoraphobic mom Edna, shooting for Divine but ending up landing on Amateur Cher Impersonator. Still, A+ for effort, and his chemistry with Chris Walken is off the charts, baby!

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