Fame (Monday, September 28, 2009) (135)

When I was growing up, my mother owned three cassette tapes that she would play on rotation in her car. They were Carly Simon's 'Boys in the Trees,' the soundtrack to Flashdance, and the soundtrack to the 1980 Fame movie musical. (My mother loved Irene Cara- what a feeling!) Over the years of listening to this in our Oldsmobile station wagon, I developed a deep love for the music - and ultimately grew a strong connection to the movie.

When I heard they were re-making Fame (again), I got excited and nervous. It seemed like an obvious choice nearly 30 years after the original. It's a rather universal story of teen angst with a setting that fits in naturally to the musical format. It would seem that an updated story would deal with more drugs and sex and a different arts environment (like kids with MySpace pages or releasing videos of themselves on YouTube). However I knew it could easily be screwed up.

My worst fears were met as this updated Fame is really bad. It's lifeless and timid and dull with almost no interesting characters - and somehow not a single memorable or good new song.

The story is basically the same as the original. It's about eight or so students at the New York High School for the Performing Arts who are dancers, singers, actors and musicians studying their crafts and dealing with normal high school drama - like cheating boyfriends/girlfriends, drinking and suicide. The original structure is also the same so you see four years of school compressed in a bit under two hours. Whereas this format worked in the original, here is feels forced and rushed so you barely blink, and after one scene freshman year is over.

The characters are totally dull and comically trite. The one black male is a budding actor, writer and rapper - whose father left when he was an infant and whose sister was gunned down in a drive-by shooting (I mean, you couldn't do any better than that?!). The hoity-toity white dancer girl has over-protective ritzy parents who don't like that she dates a Puerto Rican kid (in New York City - really?!). The one black female is a professional-level pianist whose parents are so uptight that they don't want her singing R&B - because that's hoochie music. To say the characters are out of central casting is an insult to central casting.

Perhaps the most unforgivable part of the re-make is that they used only one and a half of the original songs (which are mostly great, if a bit dated and electric guitar heavy) - and replaced them directly with new songs that totally suck. In one early scene, you see the kids in a cafeteria and you're thinking, 'Oh - cool - Hot Lunch!' But it turns out it's a totally new song that has nothing to do with eating a hot lunch - and it totally forgettable and boring. In the graduation scene, there's a big performance with all the kids from the story and rather than doing The Body Electric, they use a new, unmemorable song.

Strangely, it's the first musical I think I've ever known where the lyrics don't drive the songs, but the music overpowers the words. In other words, the way the songs are mixed, I can't even say I understood a single line from them. There are no memorable lines - no 'fame! - I'm gonna live forever;' no, 'Out here on my own;' no 'I wanna go crazy like the dogs in the yard;' and no 'I sing the body electric.' It all a bunch of half-hip-hop/R&B, half ballad-y rock songs that are all shapeless and all dull.

Music-wise, the best part clearly is the piano and voice solo by Naturi Naughton (who also played Lil' Kim very well earlier this year in Notorious) performing the one original song they did use, 'Out Here On My Own.' It was great with Irene Cara did it - now it's great again here. (There's a new arrangement of the song Fame in the end credits - but it's not a good as the original.) Naughton is easily the best part of the film overall.

I think I'm mostly upset that the whole movie is a gigantic cop-out and barely scrapes the surface of what it could be. There is basically no sex in the movie to speak of. There are two suggested couples, but we don't really see them do much couple stuff and I don't think they ever kiss. There's one almost-sorta gay kid - a dancer of course - who just talks with a sorta gay affect. I mean they took such a great gay character from the original, Montgomery, who really struggled with being gay and different, and turned him into a neutered kid who almost considers suicide - but only lamely.

Throughout the whole film, it felt that the filmmakers were trying to compete with High School Musical. In the end they got a totally banal and safe movie with dialogue, choreography and music only about as good as a low-end made for TV movie - and not even as good as that (I can remember some of those Disney songs, at least). This movie should be missed - it bad. (But try to see Naughton's performance on YouTube.)

Stars: 1 of 4 (Naughton gets 4 on her own - so she brings the film up from 0 to 1 star)