Fame

This iteration of FAME doesn’t necessarily have to be construed as a remake or re-envisioning of the popular 80’s movie. In fact, it stands alone quite well by itself as a modern-day take on the New York Performing Arts High School and the new group of talented youngsters that have been selected to attend in the hopes of making it big in their respective fields whether they be dance, singing, instrumental, music production, or filmmaking. The cast themselves are relatively unrecognizable faces in the film industry, most of them having cut their teeth in television. This movie has everything the original “Fame” has. It has musical and dance numbers, conflicted characters, and demanding, yet supportive teachers.

While this movie has the heart and spirit of the first FAME, this version lacks the grittiness of its namesake. FAME came out before the Disney-fication of New York City, and because of the time it came out in, it feels real. It portrays the life of the students in an unflinching manner untouched by the HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL people that feel the need to make everything sanitary (for our protection). The students in this movie really didn’t face any problems that were insurmountable, or even all that difficult to deal with if they had used just a little bit of common sense.

The should-I-or-shouldn’t-I problem of going to an audition with someone who is known for taking advantage of girls in his trailer is nothing compared to the realness of the audition Coco had to do in the original film. The girlfriend with the boyfriend from the other side of the tracks storyline has been done to death but re-hashed in this movie briefly anyways. The film suffers from something that most films that feature an ensemble cast suffers from. I could care less about most of the characters in this film because you don’t take enough time to develop all of them equally, or enough. Basically I just spent the entire movie waiting for the next musical number to start. Even when one of the students almost commits suicide (because he’s just not good enough to become a professional dancer), I had to take a second and remind myself which emo prancer he was. This is a movie that meant well, and tried to live up to the original. And it did, in name only. The best parts of this movie, and sometimes the most real, were the scenes featuring the teachers. They pushed their students, and told them the truth, rather than telling them that they will make it and their lives will be just hunky-dory

FAME will live forever, just not this version.