Let's just remake Hollywood !

As part of a brilliant and dazzlingly creative scheme to escape the torment of their recent financial morass, MGM has decided to blaze a new trail in Hollywood and make a entirely new movie, based on a completely original idea.

Sorry...Just kidding – They're going to remake Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

The 1988 original, helmed by Frank Oz, is one of the most forgettable films to ever stimulate the human synapses. And now they want to do it again. And this probably won't be the last time. No-one has signed on to have their careers blighted by this travesty yet, but A-list talent is [claimed] to be reviewing the project with interest.

And it doesn't end there: MGM also have remakes of Red Dawn, Robocop, Fame and Poltergeist in development. Robocop I can almost understand – The original is a kitschy classic, but it was hollow. They made a good idea...badly. It might actually do better in remake. And Poltergeist has been re-made as every shlock-horror flick of the last twenty years, so that's a moot point. Red Dawn was a good movie, but without Patrick it's doomed to be a messy pastiche of its former self. Not a good idea.

But my favorite item from MGM's public confession of creative inadequacy is Fame. Released on May 16th, 1980 it was a box office juggernaut and won two Oscars. So at 28 years old it was made years before any of the audience MGM hope to sell it to this time, so they'll think it's a new idea. Add the two Oscars and it doesn't take a mental giant to see the appeal.

But the funniest part is the subject matter. Set at NYC's High School for the Performing Arts, it [at least, the original of it] contains more action and movement in one scene than a 2008 teenager has experienced in their entire cosseted, Wii-thrashing lives.

MGM are clearly thinking it was huge in 1980, so it can be huge again now. Wrong! 1980 was a different world - Wii's didn't exist, PS3's didn't exist. Cellphones were the size of dictionaries, and computers were large, clunky boxes in the corners of science labs, and could only be touched by odd little men with white lab coats and terminal acne. A 2003 teen would call it the stone age. And looking back, I'd agree. But that's just the point: Make a movie about 'The NYC Academy of Txt Msgng' and you'd have lines round the block! But show today's teens a movie where intelligent people who are not on medication indulge voluntarily in frantic activity that leaves every inch of their bodies hosed in sweat, and they'll think it's a cult. Or some kind of torture.

They move their fingers to type, or their thumbs to talk. Show them more exertion than that and the only thing they'll move is their butts...Towards another movie! I can only wish MGM well with their forthcoming flop...And feel deeply relieved it's not my money at stake.


MGM Cat photo by: 00ucci
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