I’m not overly familiar with the 1980 version of Fame aside from its hit title song, but I do know it was rated R, which alone gives it an edge over this slick, but bland PG revamp that, despite periodically producing a beat you can dance to, acts too much like a soap you’d see on the CW.
As in the original flick, we get to watch as several students struggle to prove themselves and deal with life while attending what used to be called the New York Academy of Performing Arts, but is now called Fiorello H. Laguardia High School.
Things start out somewhat promisingly as we meet the various youths-with-big-dreams auditioning to get into the school. They sing, dance, play instruments, act, etc. One kid performs a painfully off-key version of “All That Jazz.” There’s an actual sort of tension in the air, even though it’s somewhat obvious who’s going to be accepted.
Also, director Kevin Tancharoen does a pretty good job of staging and editing the musical set pieces, be it the graduation day spectacular or a girl at a piano belting out a song. The best and most energetic sequence sees the students suddenly start performing in the school cafeteria–dancing on top of tables, rapping, pumping their fists in the air. It really feels alive.
Too bad, then, that the rest of the film falls so flat. You feel absolutely no emotional connection to anybody or anything they go through. Part of the blame lies with the photogenic but lackluster young actors, whose names you will probably not remember. Mainly, though, it’s because the students’ clichéd personal situations are presented in such a halfhearted fashion.
Fighting tepidly to inject some gravitas into it all as the stock stern-but-well-meaning teachers are Frasier star Kelsey Grammer, Broadway vets Bebe Neuwirth and Megan Mullally, and character actor Charles S. Dutton. Dutton comes off the best, mostly because he gets more screen time than the others. Debbie Allen, who appeared in the original flick, cameos as the school’s principal.
The film would have benefited by being PG-13, I think, allowing for some student to at least have a drug problem or something. As it is, aside from one instance, none of the “kids” here so much as swears. But one of them does pitch a film to a guy as “Bad and the Beautiful meets Life Aquatic.” I would have pitched this one as Gossip Girl meets High School Musical. – [DVD]
Comedy/Drama/Family/Musical
Rated PG
DVD Release Date: 1/12/10