Adam Shankman

Choreography came first, and it never really stopped mattering. Shankman began in musical theatre and danced in music videos for Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson before he directed anything, and the movement background remains the most reliable thing in his filmography. He can stage a number. Hairspray is the proof: the 2007 version moves like someone who knows where a camera has to be when a dancer lands, and it is far and away the best film he has made.

The directing career splits cleanly. On one side sit the studio comedies that made his name and his money, The Wedding Planner, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier, Bedtime Stories, What Men Want, all of them built on a single high concept and a star doing the heavy lifting. On the other sit the musicals, where his actual talent lives: Hairspray, then Rock of Ages, which mistakes volume for energy, and Disenchanted, which is at least fluent in the Disney grammar it is parodying. He also directed A Walk to Remember, the outlier, a sincere weepie with no jokes in it at all.

He is visible as well as busy. Two seasons of So You Think You Can Dance had him as a permanent judge, and he tucks himself into his own films in bit parts, a medical assistant here, a clam bake chef there, a talent agent in Hairspray. The next feature listed is Stop! That! Train!, due in 2026. A director whose reputation rests on light entertainment is easy to underrate; the dance sequences are the part that will last.