I hate remakes. There was never any reason to remake, say, Sabrina. When it came out I said: Who can top Bogie, Audrey and Holden? They didn’t and it also laid an egg at the box office.At the time they claimed they did it because the original was in black and white. The original was not only a classic but boffo at the box office. Billy Wilder was alive at the time it came out and, while he didn’t like the remake, he didn’t object to being paid a second time for his script.
The latest unnecessary remake is ofFootloose. Not a particular favorite of mine but it was a pretty good flick and also a big hit. It was in color so the other lame excuse doesn’t apply. Not only that but it’s essentially a recreation.Here’s how Roger Ebert led his review:
There’s one thing to be said for a remake of a 1984 movie that uses the original’s screenplay. This 2011 version is so similar — sometimes song for song and line for line — that I was wickedly tempted to reprint my 1984 review, word for word. But That Would be Wrong. I think I could have gotten away with it, though. The movies differ in such tiny details (the hero now moves to Tennessee from Massachusetts, not Chicago) that few would have noticed.
Was there then, or is there now, a town in Tennessee or any other state in which the city council has passed a law against “dancing in public”? There may have been a brief period, soon after Elvis first began grinding his pelvis, and preachers denounced rock ‘n’ roll as “the devil’s music.” But for most young moviegoers, this plot point is going to seem so unlikely as to be bizarre.
I can’t top that, y’all, other than pointing you toMatt Zoller Seitz’s list of the worst remakes of all time. Remember this: behind every movie remake there’s lassitude *and* malakatude.
Don’t even get me started about teevee shows remade as movies…