"The New Yorker"s David Denby felt the new version of "Hairspray" was "perfectly pleasant," but compared unfavorably to the Broadway musical, since "Adam Shankman and screenwriter Leslie Dixon have removed the traces of camp humor and Broadway blue that gave the stage show its happily knowing flavor." Denby criticized the dance numbers, calling them "unimaginatively shot," and he considered "the idea of substituting John Travolta for Harvey Fierstein as Tracy’s hefty mother... a blandly earnest betrayal." Stephanie Zacharek of "Salon.com" found "Hairspray" "reasonably entertaining. But do we really need to be entertained reasonably? Waters' original was a crazy sprawl that made perfect sense; this "Hairspray" toils needlessly to make sense of that craziness, and something gets lost in the translation." Zacharek was also displeased with the way Latifah's performance of "I Know Where I've Been" was incorporated into the movie, saying "The filmmakers may believe they're adding an extra layer of seriousness to the material... the inclusion of this big production number only suggests that the filmmakers fear the audience won't get the movie's message unless it's spelled out for them."