Hairspray meets the King of Comedy

Poor Marva. She looks like young (fat) Ricki Lake in Hairspray. And our first glimpse of her is even less appetizing because she's blacked out her front teeth to imitate the gap-toothed French pop star Vanessa Paradis (unknown to most Americans except as Johnny Depp's main squeeze). Marva is a high school student with dreams of pop stardom. Unfortunately she lacks talent, looks, training, and luck. She repeatedly enters, and bombs out at karaoke contests (evidently in Belgium - where all this happens - those contests are done in costume and make-up, shamelessly, tastelessly). But Marva yearns to be another superstar like Debbie - the current Belgian flavor of the month. Marva's dad works the nightshift at the local factory ... until it goes bankrupt. Her dream is his dream and, although he is equally devoid of talent, he imagines that he can conjure up a melody that will whisk her to stardom.

Then the going gets weird. Dad has a chance encounter with the real Debbie and, on the spur of the moment, conjures up a plan to kidnap her and hold her for ransom. Dad is every bit as inept at crime as he is at showbiz; his idea of ransom is making Debbie's manager make a record out of Dad's latest tune and give Marva an audition. The manager comes up with an agenda of his own. Meanwhile Debbie seems to enjoy being a hostage more than being a celebrity. And it gets weirder. I might add that the film also plays a little joke on us at the end.

This is a very cute movie. Eva Van Der Gucht is very appealing as the ugly duckling Marva (the producers actually advertised for a "Fat Girl" and she answered the ad). Josse De Pauw is her dad, Werner De Smedt is his partner in crime, Gert Portael is mom, Thekla Reuten is Debbie, and Viktor Low is her manager. EVERYBODY'S FAMOUS! (Iedereen Beroemd! -- The film I saw had the screen title Everybody's ... with the apostrophe S, but it seems that most of the internet postings were done by someone not accustomed to the English language) was the Belgian nominee for the Academy Awards foreign film. The dialogue is all in Flemish, a language not terribly different from Dutch, and there are subtitles (but, unfortunately, not for many of the songs).

If you liked LITTLE VOICE, you should like this. Unfortunately, there's about five seconds of nudity (Debbie, not Marva) which would keep the kiddies out ... not that kiddies like to read subtitles anyway.