Fame

Editorial

What's the point of a remake? Is it to introduce a brand-new posse of people to something their age or ignorance may have kept them from experiencing? Or, more ruthlessly, is it easier and cheaper to churn out a movie when an existing one can be used as the unoriginal starting point?

The poorly performing remake of Fame sits squarely in the second camp, a pallid retread of the kitsch but surprisingly hardy 1980 favourite about students trying to make it at New York’s High School of Performing Arts.

Replacing heart with more songs about “belief”, and gravitas with a hollow Wes Anderson reference, director Kevin Tancharoen and writer Allison Burnett’s Fame won’t live forever or light up the sky like a flame.

What it does is lean more towards the Step Up and Centre Stage school of modern art movies – heavy on movement, light on meaning - where the first Fame was like A Chorus Line for teens.

Tancharoen’s target audience might fall for the overly produced ballads, slo-mo leaping and watery hip-hop, but why was Fame’s name and structure borrowed if they were just going to be dulled down into another identikit teen flick?

Caring about the gaggle of wannabes in the Fame class of 1980 was a given, thanks to a believable ensemble and director Alan Parker’s authentic handling of Christopher Gore’s starry-eyed screenplay.

But the decision to only cast photogenic actors in lead roles (the original troupe was a proper bunch of misfits and lookers) indicates how Tancharoen shies away from the ugly sides of fame.

Considering how the cult of celebrity has radically transformed and transfixed the Western World since the days of Irene Cara, the Fame update ignores exploring the contemporary blood, sweat and tears of studying to be a show business sensation.

As suggested by its being a rip-off, Tancharoen’s rehash shares the iGeneration’s sense of entitlement about instant success. Apparently, the only thing the reworked Fame felt it had to do to make us remember its name was to plagiarise something cool from the ancient past.

Perhaps it’s something of a relief, then, that this lame Fame doesn’t attempt to recreate the famous street sequence in which Cara’s Oscar-winning theme song ignites a spontaneous New York City block party. For that matter, the rest of Fame could also have been left alone.

Ben McEachen