September 27, 2009
Inferior in every way to the 1980 movie of the same name. This means: less gritty, less realistic, less adult, more Disneyfied, more bland, more dumbed-down, more shiny, less dramatic, and much, much less interesting.
It's as if Fame has been re-produced by the team who made High School Musical. They have deftly removed from the concept anything that could look like a problem experienced in the real world by young show-biz wannabees - nobody's poor, nobody's gay, nobody's getting sexually exploited by unscrupulous con-artists. The most disagreeable things that happen to any of the characters this time around are that one girl's posh parents are implausibly annoyed with her for ditching classical piano in favour of singing with a hip-hop band, and one boy is stung for $5,000 of his dad's savings, which - oh dear! - he will have to pay back.
Otherwise, as has already been remarked, it's rather like watching auditions for America's Got Talent, but without the opportunity to press the red buzzer.
It's as if Fame has been re-produced by the team who made High School Musical. They have deftly removed from the concept anything that could look like a problem experienced in the real world by young show-biz wannabees - nobody's poor, nobody's gay, nobody's getting sexually exploited by unscrupulous con-artists. The most disagreeable things that happen to any of the characters this time around are that one girl's posh parents are implausibly annoyed with her for ditching classical piano in favour of singing with a hip-hop band, and one boy is stung for $5,000 of his dad's savings, which - oh dear! - he will have to pay back.
Otherwise, as has already been remarked, it's rather like watching auditions for America's Got Talent, but without the opportunity to press the red buzzer.