Did you hear they are remaking...why?

I know usually on this blog Nathan and I focus on a particular movie, however I would like to focus on a particular group of movies this time. Remakes are something that just really annoys me. I suppose if it is done right a remake can be a beautiful thing, but 99.9% of the time the remake of a movie pales in comparison to the original and that is putting it nicely.

A perfect example of this is "The Pink Panther." The original of this movie was released in 1963. The original starred Peter Sellers who was an absolute comic genius, if you do not believe me check him out sometime, he was in a lot more than just "The Pink Panther." He was in fact a bumbling and clueless detective, however it was very funny and witty. When it was remade in 2006, Steve Martin replaced Sellers and the results were tragic. Instead of coming off funny and witty he came across as silly and annoying. Please do not get me wrong, I have nothing against Steve Martin and I do believe he is very talented, but this movie should have been left alone. It was perfect the first time around, the second time around you had the distinct impression that the studio was just trying to milk the movie for all it was worth. Lets all hope the remake of "Get Smart" is not as bad.

With the mention of "Get Smart" that brings me to the next topic of remakes. That is the TV show remakes. These can work two ways, one the TV show is such a hit they make a movie out of it. The second way is the movie worked so well they decide to make a TV show out of it. An example of the former is "The Dukes of Hazzard." An Example of the latter is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" which was made into "My Big Fat Greek Life." On both of these examples the original far outshines the remake. Moving mediums like this does not usually work, in fact it usually fails miserably.

Another genre of remakes is foreign films. Take for example "The Departed," this was originally a Japanese movie "Mou Gaan Dou." This is one of the exceptions to the rule, this movie was great both in the US and in Japan. The major argument I have about these are; Why can't we leave well enough alone? The Japanese make wonderful movies, especially Horror movies. "The Grudge"(Ju-on), "The Ring"(Ringu), and "Pulse"(Kairo) are all remakes of Japanese Horror films. I have no idea what makes us think we should remake all of these great foreign movies. I fully believe we should show them here in the US the way they were meant to be seen. They have a much better effect that way.

The final remake I would like to discuss is the remake masquerading as an original. I was watching TV tonight and I saw a trailer for a movie called "Made of Honor." This movie is about a man that has lots of friends but only one best friend. No surprise this best friend is a girl and she tells him she is engaged and would like him to be her maid of honor. Soon he realizes he is in love with his best friend and accepts the offer to be able to break up the engagement and stop the wedding. Now I remember this movie from a few years ago, it was called "My Best Friend's Wedding." This is the type of remake I truly despise, the non-remake remake. Do they really think they can fool us by switching the genders of the main characters. The sad thing is and it sounds really mean but it must be said, Patrick Dempsey is the main character in this movie and thousands of McDreamy's fans will flock to see it. Could the movie studio not find him something rather original to be in.

Bottom line is, remakes are a bad bad bad bad idea. They exist though, I remember talking to a girl not too long ago that thought "Psycho" was made originally in 1998. She had no idea who Alfred Hitchcock was or that the original "Psycho" was one of the greatest movies ever made. This is the danger of remakes, there is a whole generation that needs to know the originals of these movies were great and we need to make them aware to keep the movies alive. So, please do your part, next time you go to the rental store or the movie theatre, remember the film that made the one your seeing what it is, there is almost always one of those.