Word On The Street: Fame Remake Sucks

For anyone who hasn’t seen the original 1980 version of Fame, it’s not exactly what you’d expect. Because you were expecting a grinning mob of leotard whores prancing around, squealing “feel the music!” to one another, whilst occasionally breaking rank to march silently towards a mirror, caressing their bodies, growling like tigers, weren’t you? Weren’t you? Go on, admit it. You were. And, for the most part, you’d be right.

But, the original film was so much more than that. It was bleak. It was brilliant. And the new one, apparently, is a big sack of turds. So says the Boston Herald and LA Times anyway, and they’ve SEEN it.

In the first outing, a cross section of New York “talent” is thrown together in a strict school for special people, who like singing, dancing and acting. The kids sometimes take time to play a cello in the canteen, or dash into the streets because a man in a taxi left his stereo on, and it’s playing loud music.

But, apart from that, it’s no walk in the park for these students – some of whom have been punched in the face by the ugly fist, yet still see their career in the limelight. By which we may or may not be referring to Bruno and Ralph. One student almost gets raped by a horny photographer, one is battling with gayness, one considers suicide, there’s a ballerina abortion, there are drugs flying around. Leroy destroys things. It’s heavy going.

Of the latest version, which looks a bit like High School Musical, but with slightly more pubes, James Verniere of the Boston Herald says:

“… for the most part, the conflicts are canned, the dance scenes lifted from “Flashdance” and “All That Jazz,” the dialogue banal and the chemistry lacking. Believe in yourself, hold on to your dreams, we are told. I get better advice in fortune cookies.”

He even hilariously awards the movie about school a C+.

It’s gets an equally frosty reception from the LA Times:

“Fame, it turns out, is not going to live forever… gone is almost every shred of the gutsy, gritty script that Christopher Gore wrote.”

This time around, there’s a talented songstress who needs to show her dad that she can sing, a rapper of some sort, and a sexy dancer called Kherington Payne, who has previously starred in a TV show about dancing. Plus Frasier teaches everyone music.

Yep, sounds pretty rubbish.

Fame, 1980

Fame, 2009

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