Jericho: The well is dry in Hollywood.
People have made a sport out of poking fun at Hollywood. It's easy to point fingers and say that nothing but crap is flowing from Southern California. While this may or may not be true, does Hollywood need to keep handing us crap that they handed us before? Has Hollywood run out of fresh ideas? Is the situation so bad that the only thing to do is to raid the vault, pull out old movies and remake them?
This came into my radar one day as I sat at home, flipping past channels and came across a movie playing on the Bravo network, a black and white gem directed by Frank Capra starring Gary Cooper called Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. I had just recently watched the remake of this movie, titled "Mr. Deeds" starring Adam Sandler. Frankly, the Capra/Cooper movie was slower by my Mtv standards, but quite often funnier. Sandler and crew have had pretty good luck making formula movies in the past decade, why pull out this old classic and proceed to butcher it? Gary Cooper would have decked him!
This isn't the first time this kind of thing happened, oh no! Hollyweird apparently has a whole host of remakes, most of which flop. Take, for example, "Psycho" - arguably one of the best Alfred Hitchcock movies. This was remade a few years ago, shot for shot, movement for movement. The only changes were the actors, it was in color and there was more gore. Flopped like a fish on dry land!
Disney recently remade "Freaky Friday" it was okay, but compared to the original or compared to 1987's "Like Father, Like Son" starring Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore or 1988's "18 Again" with George Burns, we certainly didn't get anything new, so why do a remake? Along this line, we have the recent "Love Don't Cost a Thing" which is an obvious remake of the 1987 classic "Can't Buy Me Love" - the only new thing added here is that the cast is black.
Out this year are the favorites "Dawn of the Dead" - do we really need this to be remade? - and "The Stepford Wives" which features a stellar cast but, really, why mess with the original? Nicole Kidman just can't get any real work since she left Tom?
This summer we will have "Van Helsing" starring Hugh Jackman. This isn't so much a remake as the continuation of some bad traditions. This movie raids such Hollywood classics as Dracula, The Wolfman, Frankenstein and Tim Burton's "Batman" (watch the trailer - the switchblade crucifix is a dead giveaway) All of those movies raided classic stories found elsewhere, and then repeatedly raped them for our amusement. Lon Chaney, Tor Johnson, Boris Karloff and George Clooney - oy!
Finally, we have possibly the worst crime of all. The TNT network decided to remake Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl." The worst part about it, Neil Simon was involved. I cannot imagine, being a fan of the original movie, that "Dumb and Dumber" actor Jeff Daniels could outdo the performance which brought Richard Dreyfuss five Oscar nominations. I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I understand it didn't do particularly well in the ratings. They could have saved themselves the trouble and just run the original movie - maybe having Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason come in and do a commentary around the commercials. What a waste.
Hear me, Hollywood: find something original to shoot! Okay?!?!
This came into my radar one day as I sat at home, flipping past channels and came across a movie playing on the Bravo network, a black and white gem directed by Frank Capra starring Gary Cooper called Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. I had just recently watched the remake of this movie, titled "Mr. Deeds" starring Adam Sandler. Frankly, the Capra/Cooper movie was slower by my Mtv standards, but quite often funnier. Sandler and crew have had pretty good luck making formula movies in the past decade, why pull out this old classic and proceed to butcher it? Gary Cooper would have decked him!
This isn't the first time this kind of thing happened, oh no! Hollyweird apparently has a whole host of remakes, most of which flop. Take, for example, "Psycho" - arguably one of the best Alfred Hitchcock movies. This was remade a few years ago, shot for shot, movement for movement. The only changes were the actors, it was in color and there was more gore. Flopped like a fish on dry land!
Disney recently remade "Freaky Friday" it was okay, but compared to the original or compared to 1987's "Like Father, Like Son" starring Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore or 1988's "18 Again" with George Burns, we certainly didn't get anything new, so why do a remake? Along this line, we have the recent "Love Don't Cost a Thing" which is an obvious remake of the 1987 classic "Can't Buy Me Love" - the only new thing added here is that the cast is black.
Out this year are the favorites "Dawn of the Dead" - do we really need this to be remade? - and "The Stepford Wives" which features a stellar cast but, really, why mess with the original? Nicole Kidman just can't get any real work since she left Tom?
This summer we will have "Van Helsing" starring Hugh Jackman. This isn't so much a remake as the continuation of some bad traditions. This movie raids such Hollywood classics as Dracula, The Wolfman, Frankenstein and Tim Burton's "Batman" (watch the trailer - the switchblade crucifix is a dead giveaway) All of those movies raided classic stories found elsewhere, and then repeatedly raped them for our amusement. Lon Chaney, Tor Johnson, Boris Karloff and George Clooney - oy!
Finally, we have possibly the worst crime of all. The TNT network decided to remake Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl." The worst part about it, Neil Simon was involved. I cannot imagine, being a fan of the original movie, that "Dumb and Dumber" actor Jeff Daniels could outdo the performance which brought Richard Dreyfuss five Oscar nominations. I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I understand it didn't do particularly well in the ratings. They could have saved themselves the trouble and just run the original movie - maybe having Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason come in and do a commentary around the commercials. What a waste.
Hear me, Hollywood: find something original to shoot! Okay?!?!
posted by Jericho Brown at 1/23/2004 04:48:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home