All my friends hate me now.

I got to see a rough partial screening of Hairspray Thursday night - yes, THE Hairspray, the new musical film of the musical stage show of the original 1988 John Waters film.

And yeah, John Travolta plays the Divine role of Edna Turnblad and yeah, that didn't work so much for me, but the rest of it? Divine is smiling down from heaven.

Director Adam Shankman - one of the most powerful gay men in Hollywood, or as he called himself last night, "Just a chorus boy who got a better job" - introduced the screening, his voice actually quivering with nervousness. It was kind of adorable. As was his comment that John Waters (who has a cameo in the film) told him, "Don't make the original movie. Don't make the play. Make what you have inside."

Which, as Shankman commented, "is kind of scary when you're talking to the guy who made Cheaper by the Dozen 2."

So, other than Travolta's semi-suckage, how was the movie? Oh, just basically completely brilliant. I've been pissed off lately, what with the Supremes going all retro on abortion rights, and the pet food recall and the Virginia shootings and the war in Iraq, and well, you know, life as we know it in America today, and Hairspray is the perfect antidote to all that - and not, like a lot of movies, because it lets you escape reality for a little while.

Hairspray succeeds, in all three of its incarnations, because at heart it's a feel-good movie about fighting the good fight. Tracy Turnblad, a plump high school girl who knows she's destined for greatness as either the first woman president or maybe a Rockette, gets picked as one of the dancers on an afternoon music show on a local TV station. She uses her new-found fame to take a public stand for racial equality in segregated 1962 Baltimore, saying that if she were the first woman president she'd "make every day Negro day!"

Hairspray is all about the triumph of good over evil, and a huge hunk of that goodness comes from Tracy, who is the best heroine ever, and the one with the most bouffant hair. She was played in the 1988 Waters film by a young Ricki Lake (who, like Waters, makes a cameo appearance here). She's played in Shankman's film by newcomer Nicole Blonsky, who was discovered by the producers at the social networking version of the soda fountain, MySpace.

"She was doing her high school play, which was Carmen," Shankman told me outside the screening. "She had never worked professionally before - and by the way, what high school does Carmen?" An assistant "called the casting directors and said, 'You should look at this girl. She seems kind of cool.'"

Shankman thought so, too, but they kept looking, in a search that he says took them to every English speaking country in the world. " And I just kept going back to her thinking, what am I doing? I’m going to hire a 17 year old plus size girl who would do anything in her life to just perform to play a 17 year old plus size girl who would do anything in her life to just perform. She had all the chops. She’s just great. This is her first job - other than working at Cold Stone Creamery, which is what I pulled her out of."

It's a good thing he did, because she's a radiant ball of pure sunshine in the role. Her voice is gorgeous, and she's just the prettiest thing, with the most beautiful eyes and the aforementioned extremely high bouffant hair.

Queen Latifah as Mothermouth Mabel pretty much burns up the screen in every scene she's in. Said Shankman, "I had made Bringing Down the House with Queen Latifah, so we had already gone down a racial road before, and we had such a good time together that it seemed like such a natural fit there."

Michelle Pfeiffer's Velma Von Tussle is perfectly evil. Shankman marveled that he got her for the role, saying, "She just doesn't work anymore. She calls herself Dr. No."

But he persisted. "I always wanted Michelle. I said, if you’re up to being cool about this, I’m not going to redeem you. You are an unmitigated racist. You are - this is a horrible thing to say, but it’s like, if Jon-Benet grew up. You’re the little girl beauty queen who got stuck. You just don’t want to change. At all. And you are stuck in the late 40s.”

Zac Efron as Link Larkin (okay, I get that the character's name is made up, but the actor's name sounds made-up, too) plays Tracy's love interest. According to Wikipedia he's a huge teen idol, and I suppose everyone will look down on me now for saying he's terrific. But he is, even if he is really really pretty.

So, how gay is Hairspray? Shankman laughed. "The funny thing about this is there’s not a single gay character in the movie. Only in its genre and its spirit and its total story is it gay. But it’s as gay-relevant as it is ethno-relevant." He frowned for a second. "I totally just made up that word."

Shankman gestured out at the sea of San Francisco gay media and movie buffs who'd been at the screening, mostly very toned looking guys with short-cropped hair. "Probably most of the men in this room saw themselves as little fat girls at one point in their lives." He smiled. "I know I did."

Here is the only trailer released thus far!