Zac Efron has been consciously avoiding the exact sort of projects that turned him into a household name, which is about the smartest move he could have made. He’s evolved from a teen heartthrob into an almost alarmingly jacked and perennially underrated actor, but his early forays into the musical genre will continue to follow him everywhere he goes.
The 33 year-old may have displayed his comedic chops in vehicles like Neighbors and Baywatch, before surprising everyone with a career-best performance as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, but for a lot of people he’s always going to be the dude from High School Musical and Hairspray.
The latter has been added to the Netflix library as of today, and given the movie’s lasting reputation as a favorite among aficionados of broad rom-coms peppered with lung-bursting interludes, it could make a splash on the viewership charts over the coming days. Adam Shankman’s adaptation of the musical based on John Waters’ 1988 film hauled in $203 million at the box office and landed three Golden Globe nominations back in 2007, and it’s endured as cinematic comfort food ever since.
John Travolta and Nikki Blonsky may have won the lion’s share of plaudits, but the star-studded ensemble also sees Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Queen Latifah, James Marsden and more on top form, so Hairspray is well-placed to find new life on Netflix.
