‘Fame’ Remade: Felt Like A Disney Channel Show
Posted by anastasia on 09-28-2009
I dragged a friend of mine who is about five years younger than me to see the new “Fame” yesterday. She never saw the original but did watch the TV series. I worshiped the original and refused to watch the TV series. Both of us left disappointed.
A lot of the critique/discussion about the movie, including my own before seeing it, has been about the changing definition of what fame is and how many more people can achieve it (thank you internet, inexpensive video cameras, etc.). See this interesting Salon piece on how fame has changed as well. For this post, I wanted to focus less on that larger issue and more on the remake itself. Be warned, lots of spoilers ahead.
Let’s start with the positive – very multicultural cast who actually look like teenagers. As much as I loved the original players, they did not look like high school students. I thought the new faculty were all pretty strong actors (especially Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth. Frasier reunion?) — some had terrible lines, but I’ll leave the writing issues for the negative section. Fun dance scenes. I’m a sucker for a well choreographed dance routine. Um….that was really it for me on the positives.
What made this move feel “Lame” vs. “Fame” was that it just wasn’t a good movie. We barely got to know the main characters — all way too pretty (did The CW do the casting?), and none of which had any real depth to them. They felt incredibly two dimensional. “Jenny” — what was her story? It seemed like she was supposed to be like mousy Doris except without Doris’s overbearing Jewish mother, Brooklyn accent or all of the time/scenes the original gave Doris to come of age over four years. Not that this actress could have pulled it off if they did write her a richer character. Instead she has this bland romance with “Marco” who looks like a young Andrew Shue and sounds like he could sing in a boy band.
I also wonder if attempting to remake “Fame” as a movie for teens vs. about teens with a PG rating was just misguided. This Fame was so squeaky clean it makes FOX’s “Glee” feel like adult entertainment. There was no sex/pregnancy/abortion or drugs with the exception of alcohol where it seemed like teachers were always around. There were characters who seemed gay but no discussion of sexuality or homosexuality. We get a little “casting couch” make out session and see an invitation to come over when dad is on a date, but that’s it. There is a teen who lost his sister to inner city violence, but no homelessness, illiteracy or scenes of life in the projects. Do these issues still exist for teens today? Are there still projects in NYC? Um…yes, just not in this version of “Fame.” Does a move have to be rated R to include these issues? Not really. Maybe PG-13, but they chose to scrub it all away leaving a sterile shell of the original.
A Facebook friend posted that part of the problem is the “gritty, tough NYC” of the 80s doesn’t exist anymore. While I agree that NYC has changed dramatically since then, there are still pockets, projects and neighborhoods full of character that just don’t really get any play in the movie. There is no equivalent to Doris’s indoctrination into Rocky Horror, Montgomery’s mom’s big empty loft and that blinking neon sign, Ralph’s uptown projects, the comedy club or even the streets outside the school where Bruno’s dad stops traffic to play “Fame.” In the new Fame, we see brief flashes of neighborhood facades and Lucky Cheng’s (the karaoke side, not the drag club).
In the remake, people drop out of school for jobs in dance companies or on Sesame Street. We don’t get to see everyone graduate together. The sad part about this was I didn’t care about the characters who dropped out enough to even miss them at cap and gown time.
Finally, part of what made the original “Fame” such a classic was the MUSIC. The soundtrack. Apart from a very well sung “On My Own,” the rest of the songs just didn’t feel like a part of the movie. No dancing to “Fame” outside in the street, no serenading Shady Sadie the lunch lady in the cafeteria song, no wanting to go crazy like the dogs in the yard about getting into PA. The songs in the remake didn’t feel essential to the movie. The graduation song was definitely no Body Electric.
If you saw the new “Fame” this weekend and agree or disagree, leave your thoughts in the comments!
Categorized under: Movies & Music
September 28th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I’ve seen the original “Fame” movie multiple times, but I’m not expecting to see the 2009 version in theaters.
I’d be more interested if the new movie had a few people from the 1980 movie, instead of just Debbie Allen, who doesn’t even play the same character.
Anastasia Goodstein -
Do you think you would have liked the remake better if they showed what characters such as Bruno Martelli and Doris Finsecker were up to these days?
September 29th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Hi Eric. Nah on the where are they now question — but a remake that had the same edginess as the original with new and more richly drawn characters would have been satisfying.