Zac Efron stars as Link Larkin in New Line Cinema's musical comedy Hairspray.
What happened to the coarsening of our culture? By now, to be a teen heartthrob, you should have done time in rehab, videotaped yourself having sex or been shot in the face at least once. But instead we've gone backward, from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley to Leonardo DiCaprio to Justin Timberlake to Zac Efron. By 2020, 12-year-old girls will be decorating their lockers with photos of the surgeon general.
Past teen idols often got famous for delivering slightly gritty entertainment: a hip swivel, a risqué rock song, having sex on a sinking ship. But now that there are enough cable...
