High hair, bubblegum rock ’n’ roll and integration are the unlikely set of ingredients that set Hairspray spinning in director-choreographer Adam Shankman’s wonderfully buoyant screen version of the Broadway smash hit.

Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes, left) and Prudy Pingleton (Allison Janney) struggle in Hairspray.

MCT

The Tony Award-winning show, based on the 1988 John Waters film about a chubby girl who becomes the unlikely new dancing sensation on a Baltimore teenage dance show in 1962 and then sets out to integrate it, comes to the screen with most of its songs, its mix of whimsy and cynicism and its irrepressible cheerfulness intact. Not to mention John Travolta as a housebound housewife in a housedress.

The role of Edna Turnblad has traditionally been played by a man in drag, the way the role of Peter Pan in stage productions has traditionally been played by a female. In Waters’ non-musical film, Edna was played by Divine, a Baltimore drag queen who was a Waters movie mainstay until the day he died. On Broadway, Harvey Fierstein won a Tony as Edna and the role has been played by males in touring productions.

But Travolta, who was an international dancing heartthrob 30 years ago in Grease and Saturday Night Fever, comes with a lot of baggage. Could he get us not only to forget that we’re seeing John Travolta in a wig and a dowdy housedress, but that Edna was a woman who loved her daughter and husband, Wilbur (Christopher Walken), who runs the Hardy-Har-Hut joke shop on the first floor of their Baltimore house?

Happily, the answer is a resounding yes! After the initial shock of seeing Travolta in a dress, a fat suit and prosthetics that puff up his face (he looks a little like a chubby version of ’60s star Suzanne Pleshette), he truly does become Edna, a woman who has a lot of love to give, but has been afraid to leave the house because of her ballooning size since 1951. When he and Walken sing the cheery ode to love — “(You’re) Timeless to Me,” (performed on stage in front of a curtain so the behind-the-curtain scenery could be changed) — it becomes a joyous, show-stopping romp through the meadowlands of love, complete with fantasy moments that include a flamenco outfit and clothes flapping on a line.

But although he’s top billed, Travolta’s Edna is actually a crucial though secondary character. Hairspray is really about daughter Tracy’s efforts to make the black kids, who are allowed to dance on The Corny Collins Show only once a month on “Negro Day,” show regulars. Tracy sees integration as “the new frontier.”

The interracial message of Hairspray is solid and strong, yet presented in such a delightfully amusing way with the humorously pointed songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and Shankman’s bouncy choreography that it never seems heavy-handed. Toe-tapping is the word for Hairspray, right from its sunnily rousing opening number, “Good Morning Baltimore,” which has Tracy bouncing out of bed and getting ready for school while chirping merrily about everything from the rats on the street to the bum on the barroom stool to the flasher down the street (played by Waters himself). When she arrives at school atop a garbage truck after missing her bus, you get the feeling that if Shankman can keep up the humor and pace, Hairspray will be a crowd pleaser.

He does.

It is.

New discovery Nikki Blonsky sparkles as Tracy, brimming with confidence and high spirits, never afraid to tackle almost-impossible situations and determined to do the right thing no matter how it may hurt her personally. Blonsky brings energy and class to Tracy and to the film, bubbling her way through a series of lively numbers which usually underscore her hopes and promise.

When a spot opens up on Tracy’s favorite TV show, she decides to audition. Edna is against it, fearing Tracy will only be crushed if she doesn’t get a slot because of her hefty size. But the sweet-natured Wilbur and Tracy’s best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes) egg her on, even though Penny herself is under the restrictive thumb of her holy-roller mother (Allison Janney). Amazingly, Tracy’s peppy dance style catches the attention of Corny Collins himself (James Marsden). Corny has been looking to spin his show in more inclusive directions, much to the distress of WZYT program director Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who already thinks he spins too many records by black artists. The show’s all-white dancers include Velma’s own pampered, talentless daughter, Amber (Brittany Snow) and the hunky Link Larkin (Zac Efron of TV’s High School Musical), Tracy’s fantasy dreamboat who is a sort of John Travolta of his time.

Along the way, Tracy will befriend dancing sensation Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) and his mother, Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah), who runs an inner city record shop and is the host of “Negro Day.” And she will endure the relentless attempts by Velma Von Tussle, a Cruella De Vil-type who still proudly proclaims she was once Miss Baltimore Crabs, to get her kicked off the show.

The film’s theme of racial harmony and its sky’s-the-limit triumphs of more than one underdog are highlighted by some terrific musical numbers. Besides “Good Morning Baltimore,” they include Tracy’s stars-in-her-eyes ode to puppy love “I Can Hear the Bells;” the “Welcome to the ’60s” number, in which Edna wakes up to the possibilities of the real world and winds up fabulous in a pink-sequined plus-sized dress; the energetic “Run and Tell That,” in which Penny realizes her feelings for Seaweed in a lively number that begins in a playground and hits high energy in a dancing romp on a schoolbus, and the pro-love “Without Love.” Of course there’s also the title tune that’s an anthem to hairspray, done in cool ’60s style, and Queen Latifah’s Gospel-like “I Know Where I’ve Been.” (Jerry Stiller, who was in the 1988 film, here plays Mr. Pinky who runs the plus-size dress shop; Ricki Lake, 1988’s Tracy, has a cameo in a crowd scene near the end.)

Shankman, whose comedies include The Pacifier, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and the Steve Martin-Queen Latifah hit Bringing Down the House, keeps Hairspray roaring along. The only disappointment for me was that one of the stage show’s brightest and liveliest numbers — “Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now,” in which three mothers and their daughters square off — was cut. Apparently it was too good to be let go entirely, however, because it’s used during the closing credits.

Hairspray has plenty of body and never gets limp. It’s no stiff either.

mjanuson@projo.com