Add “live-action” to that sentence and I’ll agree with you- Horton Hears A Who! wasn’t that bad.
Uh, depending upon how you want to look at it, Roxanne could be considered a remake.
We didn’t need a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, IMHO, and certainly not the one we got.
I have to admit, I had been hoping somebody would take up the Pink Panther, but Steve Martin is wrong for the part and horrible at it to boot. My opinion was that Martin Short would have been best at it, but I’m sure others could have pulled it off. Steve Martin is awful in this role.
I agree. I liked the originals. But they are not well know movies despite the original cast. They are very rarely shown on TV and I bet most of those that viewed the movie were not aware that it was a remake. If done well this is the type of movie that should be a remake. Not a classic that will always be remembered but a good movie that could have new life when redone.
The remakes of The Manchurian Candidate and The Stepford Wives are unclean.
The sequeal to The Odd Couple is an insult to all that is good.
Why? Why would they do this? I once thought Steve Martin was cool. Why not just make all of Cary Grant’s movies while we’re at it? Lindsay Lohan, Shia LeBouff, and Hayden Christensen can be in The Philadelphia Story next year.
Don’t even joke about that.
The Stepford Wives from 2004. I couldn’t even believe this got the green light, even with some so-called ‘star’ power attached (Nicole Kidman). Ira Levin wrote a great story, and the 1975 movie brought it to the screen perfectly successfully, despite the regrettable bit of casting nepotism (director Bryan Forbes insisting on his wife Nanette Newman being cast in a role for which she was not well-suited). And with all due respect to Miss Kidman and her fans, she will never be in the same class as Katharine Ross.
I don’t mean to join the Steve Martin pile-on, but the 1999 remake of The Out-ofTowners was dreadful. Martin and Goldie Hawn both try their best, but it just doesn’t work on any level. This movie currently has an IMDB ranking of 4.9, and I think this is very generous. John Cleese is funny in it, though.
I don’t expect many will agree, but I thought the Jackson remake of King Kong falls into this category. Nothing against Jackson, whom I think can make great movies. And I wasn’t one of the nay-sayers who were condemning the very idea as soon as the project was announced. I was quite happy to approach it with an open mind and see what PJ made of it. Kong himself was a great technical achievement, but as a movie… sorry, I felt it was expensive pointlessness, and too much of it.
In this thread, do ‘remakes’ of TV series count? If so, Lost In Space has to be a strong contender for the ‘why bother?’ prize, and was one very messy movie.
Wait, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake? (Checks IMDB) Hmm, I don’t know, it doesn’t sound all that similar. Is it really a remake, or just a few similar plot details? I mean, two men in competition to seduce a woman, it’s hardly a uniquer plot twist. Anyway, I liked it, I didn’t think it was a bad movie.
Oh, and there’s a remake of DRSlisted for 2010, but no details. I don’t like the look of this.
I haven’t seent the 1957 version of My Man Godfrey, but the 1936 original didn’t leave any room for improvement.
Sounds like you’ve read Goldman’s inside look at the casting process. If not, you should. He tells a great story about how he (the scriptwriter) learned it would be a disaster that he couldn’t prevent, when Forbes told him that his not-so-hot looking wifey would be cast in the role of the kind of hottie who could only be developed as a lust-object. There was no way for Goldman to tell him “Uh, Bryan, your wife? She’s, uh, how do you say this? she, ah, the hell with it, let’s make the film!”
Oh, why not? He’s got very limited dramatic range, as in his okay performance in the Spanish Prisoner, but the man can’t do comedy. At least not in a way that makes me laugh. He keeps taking these light- comedic roles, but he’s just Christ-awful at them, mugging, pratfalling, overacting, over-enunciating…I did like the shtik in ALL OF ME, I think, but that was decades ago and he keeps pulling the same old tired shit out of his bag of tricks and expecting me to go “How nice! It’s…shit. Thank you, Steve.”
I doubt they plan to cast Martin in the Cary Grant role. He’s too old and would probably play Topper – mugging it into oblivion.
I knew that Will Ferrell is starring in the remake of Land of the Lost, but I only just found out that it’s going to be a played-for-laughs comedy vehicle. Oy!
Once upon a time, I was tricked by the title of a movie H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come - Wikipedia into paying money to see it, and I think I walked out after the first five minutes.
Supposedly that problem was the jumping-off point for the tone of the whole film as we know it – turning the Stepford women into models of plastic domesticity rather than wanton lust, as Levin’s novel had originally had it.
And you’re kinder to the movie than I am, which I say as someone who was looking forward to it a great deal and counts the original movies among his favorite of all time.
Jackson’s heart was in the right place, but the fanboy in him got carried away and the monstrous success of LoTR ensured that nobody was going to stop him from shooting himself in the foot.
Jackson had it in him to make a good Kong movie. It might even be possible to carve one out of what he wound up with. But in geeking out over the material he totally missed what made the original so great.
Looking to the future, the totally unnecessary American remake of 2008’s best film, Let the Right One In, to be directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield). Good money says this lovely little Swedish masterpiece will be raped beyond recognition, probably turned into another Twilight.
A remake of what, exactly?
It’s a variation of the Cyrano de Bergerac story, certainly, but hardly a remake of any of them.
I actually liked Day. It managed to make good use of Keanu Reeve’s woodenness, and was the rare movie in which Jennifer Connelly kept her clothes on without it being a mistake.
As opposed to what, an ultra-serious adventure action flick? I have no problem with the way they went with it.
Is it too early to call Ghostbusters III a travesty?
I’m still trying to figure out how Stephen Spielberg and Will Smith could possibly ever do justice to Oldboy.
Who in the hell thought it would make sense to attach two of Hollywood’s most squeaky-clean goody-goodies to remake a dirty rule-breaking revenge thriller. It’s not happy with merely breaking Hollywood taboo… no, it pisses on the taboo, shoots in the gut and then rapes its mother for good measure.
At least you could trust Scorcese not to pull any punches when he remade Infernal Affairs into The Departed.