FINANCIALLY ailing MGM calls its new edition of Alan Parker’s classic 1980 movie “Fame” a “reinvention.”
I call it a desperate, cynical — and most likely unsuccessful — attempt by a dying studio to stave off oblivion by jumping on the “High School Musical” bandwagon, exploiting one of its legacy titles in ways that dishonor the original.
Yes, the new “Fame” is still set at the High School of Performing Arts, and there are some Manhattan street scenes (interiors were shot in Los Angeles), though there apparently wasn’t enough money to restage the famous dancing-on-taxicabs climax in Times Square.
Like the original, it follows a group of students from their auditions to (for most of them, anyway) their graduation four years later.
But the cowardly producers have banished the grit and darkness of Parker’s original, which conveyed life in a New York City where ghetto dwellers rubbed shoulders with the comfortably middle class in a way seen in few popular entertainments.
In Christopher Gore’s original Oscar-nominated script, students struggled with poverty, unwanted pregnancy, racism, illiteracy and homosexuality in ways that earned the movie a well-deserved R rating.
In pursuit of a PG-rating (primarily for underage drinking), the “reinvention” will have none of that.
There are generic love stories (all strictly heterosexual, rather surprisingly for a performing arts school in the 21st century), worries about grades and an aspiring filmmaker ripped off by shady producers. Oh, and perhaps the lamest subway suicide attempt ever committed to celluloid.
The most telling comparison is with one of the best-remembered episodes from the 1980 original, in which one of the aspiring performers takes her clothes off for a pornographer.
Nearly 30 years later, this has been watered down to an apple-cheeked girl fighting off a pass during a phony video audition.
Handicapped by exceedingly lame direction (the inauspicious feature debut of Kevin Tancharoen), a script (Alison Burnett) that resembles a failed TV pilot, a nondescript score (Mark Isham) replacing the Oscar-winning original, confused editing, fuzzy cinematography, vulgar choreography and eyeball-gougingly ugly costumes and sets, it seems needlessly cruel to single out the young actors’ inadequate performances.
The best of the lot is probably Naturi Naughton, a Broadway veteran with a huge voice who makes an impression despite being trapped in a corny, clichéd subplot about her desire to escape her father’s ambitions for her to be a classical pianist. (What, Dad hasn’t watched “American Idol”?)
You know a “Fame” reworking is in real trouble when Naughton is nearly upstaged by Megan Mullally, as a faculty member who knocks a Rodgers and Hart number out of the park.
The staff also includes Bebe Neuwirth (whose best scene is sabotaged by clumsy cutaways), Charles S. Dutton, a subdued Kelsey Grammer, and the lone returnee from the original, Debbie Allen, who’s been promoted from teacher to principal.
“Fame” is the sole 2009 release from MGM, which is in such bad shape it has fallen into the hands of its creditors. Hopefully they’ll put this once-great studio, which is not quite celebrating its 85th birthday, out of its misery soon.
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