Fame is ultimately undone by its choppy editing, its incomplete characterizations, and its apparent desire to appeal to the High School Musical generation.
Fame is ultimately undone by its choppy editing, its incomplete characterizations, and its apparent desire to appeal to the High School Musical generation.
This remake of the '80s classic focuses on a group of young students attending a high school for the performing arts. Classmates study various aspects of performance, from dance to songwriting to acting, all of them hoping for the chance to one day become stars. Debbie Allen, Charles S. Dutton, Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullally, and Bebe Neuwirth portray the instructors, with a host of newcomers toplining the production as the students. ~ Cammila Albertson, Rovi
It's almost fatally modest. But it has a sweet spirit, and it offers only one true moment of inadvertent camp: a (lame) finale featuring an African dance routine completely at odds with all the white bread we've just been served.
The pageantry really is very nice, especially the dance numbers, but as soon as the music stops, so does Fame. It's not the worst remake ever made, it's not even really very bad, just stodgily, repressively mediocre.
The fragmented narrative of high school kids pursuing their dreams (job security) has just barely more feel and understanding of what it's like to be young than 17 Again .
Remember the theme song? "I feel it coming together/People will see me and cry . . . Fame/I'm gonna live forever/Baby, remember my name." Sadly, none of that applies to this hollow, impersonal movie.
Its lack of melodrama and shock value make it all the more refreshing. Consider this film a grittier, inner city cousin of HSM and that's no back handed compliment
Members of the class of '80 struggled to stay in school despite homelessness and crime; the greatest crisis in '09 finds a student's Sesame Street work schedule affecting her GPA.
I wasn't a huge fan of the original film but I did enjoy the TV series that came after. This remake of the film is hugely pointless because it adds nothing to the original. It does have good scenes though but unfortunately they always seem to be undone by what happens next. The second half of the film seems so
half-hearted and the grand finale is far from grand. The casting of Charles S. Dutton , Kelsey Grammer , Megan Mullally and Bebe Neuwirth was interesting and was one of the reasons I watched but ultimately they were wasted. If you loved the original you might like it though, for me it was nothing new.
I think that when a film is remade, the original is somehow labeled "ideal". Here's what I liked: the updated dance numbers. I might be crazy, but when I watch a musical, I want something fantastical. Shiny and flashy. The original... eh. The remake, yeah! And I liked that one kid actually wanting to kill himself. Much
more realistic and teen-y. And Megan Mullally and Kelsey Grammer. Yes.Here's what I didn't like: the acting. Oh boy. Yeah. Ouch. Not all actors were atrociously, but most of the leads were just not there. And as one critic pointed out: the total lack of drugs and gays. Even the original Fame was more daring than that.Overall, I think it was meh. The original crammed more character and more story into it, but this was more fun as musical type of film.
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