I went to see COLD MOUNTAIN over the weekend but it was sold out, so at my friend’s insistence we went to see Mona Lisa Smile instead. I had assumed that it would basically be a gender variant on the “unconventional teacher makes big difference among students while teaching at a snobby elite New England prep school in the last century” (basically “Dead Poets Society” with cleavage) and, it turned out, I was absolutely right.
This and the recent slew of Christmas Carol threads had me thinking: what would be your nominees for plots that need to be retired for at least a couple of decades? Mine:
-Any type of CHRISTMAS CAROL remake (it’s been done to death with lots of really good and lots of really bad and lots of really mediocre versions and there’s just really not much more you can do to it)
-Anything involving snobby New England prep schools (Dead Poet’s Society, Scent of a Woman, Mona Lisa Smile, Emperor’s Club, School Ties, etc. etc.). Perhaps 1% of 1% of the population actually attended a school matching this description and I’m convinced that none of them ever wrote a movie about it because it’s always the same characters (the Elvis villain upper-crust snob, the character who’s really okay but needed to have his/her eyes open, the misfit poor kid, etc.).
-Movies based on SNL sketches (there hasn’t been one in a while, and that’s a good thing- although GOTH TALK could possibly field one if you could buy Chris Kattan as a high school student)
-Remakes of Les Liaisons Dangereuses- it’s been a French film , a great American movie , a so-so Forman vehicle , a musical, a teen sex romp and a Rupert Everett miniseries; that’s enough film for one work. If you want to do some public domain work then make some movies of Mark Twain’s lesser read stories (or even the definitive Huckleberry Finn which has yet to be made that I’ve seen) or film new versions of Marlowe’s works or Moliere’s plays, etc., and plow new ground as this is quickly growing infertile.
-Movies about “by the book” older cops and their maverick partners (though it might be interesting to have a by-the-book rookie cop and an out of control old one).
More suggestions, please.