movie remakes that rule
Kara schlegl uncovers some movie remakes that are actually better than the originals.
HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) Truthfully, most gender-swapped remakes are ill-conceived cash grabs designed to exploit a new market. Maybe it’s because I’m cynical, or maybe it’s because I wrote an original supernatural-comedy screenplay for four unbelievably talented comediennes, but no, they had to go and do Ghostbusters. Anyway, I’m over it. I do think, however, there’s value in assessing whether a gender swap might actually elevate the story. Such is the case with His Girl Friday: a remake of 1931 screwball comedy The Front Page, which follows two men – a newspaper editor and a crack reporter – trying to cash in on a big story about an escaped murderer. By opening up the role of reporter to actress Rosalind Russell, director Howard Hawks heightens the tension, giving the characters a new back-story as exes. Cary Grant makes for a vile ex-husband hiding plenty of victim cards up his sleeves, but Russell is scorching and hilarious in her indifference, and the film still crackles nearly 80 years after its release.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998) Possibly the only convincing argument for online dating, You’ve Got Mail tells the story of two business rivals who unwittingly fall into an anonymous love affair via email. Despite the prevalence of dial-up tones, mock turtlenecks and Meg Ryan, this film feels surprisingly modern. As Meg’s character Kathleen ponders whether or not her online lover might be the Rooftop Killer, it strikes me that this flick was released a full 12 years before online-dating documentary Catfish. More striking is that the rom-com is a remake of 1940 Christmas classic The Shop Around the Corner. While Nora Ephron’s tech-savvy adaptation follows similar story beats, it transforms the leads from rival department salespeople into a small bookshop owner, Kathleen, and a corporate magnate, Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) – a man who profits from steamrolling Kathleen’s livelihood. The stakes are intentionally raised, with the power imbalance eroding the mythical heart of the original. The first flick gave us a fairytale, telling us fate is kind, but You’ve Got Mail is more powerful in its desire to confront the truth, saying fate is a real bitch, and so is falling in love. ...................
SCARFACE (1983) Sometimes a remake resonates because the original was so far ahead of its time. Take the 1932 version of Scarface – a critically acclaimed gangster masterpiece shot up by the censors and sent to sleep with the fishes for decades due to its “sympathetic” portrayal of crime. The film spoke to hedonism in the American empire and the dehumanisation of immigrants. It characterised capitalism as an overture for corruption, making the motives of the censors seem wholly political. Then, in 1983, before the Black Monday market crash but after Fidel Castro had settled into a violent and oppressive presidential reign, Brian De Palma’s Scarface remake about a Cuban asylum seeker corrupted by the American Dream flourished. This film is legendary, a masterpiece in its own right, boasting Oliver Stone as writer, Al Pacino as lead character Tony Montana, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Tony’s arm candy turned foil. But honestly, it makes a top-notch companion to an original that’s still worth seeing. ...................
PETE’S DRAGON (2016) Disney is really shitting the bed, as they say, with its sudden compulsion to churn out mediocre live-action remakes of its most beloved animated classics. It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely what makes these remakes so meh, but my best guess is capitalism. My next guess is that a great remake is never an attempt to replicate the success of the original – it’s to look upon the original with fresh eyes and imagine it as something entirely new. The Pete’s Dragon of 2016 was a Disney live-action remake, but it didn’t
live in the same wide-eyed, Little House on the Prairie-style universe that the 1977 musical comedy did. This story of a boy orphaned in a car crash who survives in the woods by making friends with a dragon has more in common with Steven Spielberg’s E.T. than its original, replacing mawkishness with real trauma and grief. Director David Lowery should be given some kind of crown, or at least a certificate, for capturing the magic of a Disney classic within the magnitude of a modern blockbuster. This is one that will make you cry. A lot. ...................
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986) Next to Jim Henson, director Frank Oz might be the most famous puppeteer of all time. (He was the hand inside Miss Piggy, the Cookie Monster and Yoda, to name a few.) Little Shop of Horrors marked his first opportunity to direct reallife humans – a welcome change, according to Oz, who grew weary of expressing his art through felt. Yet, the magic of this musical remake might be the ghastly, visceral personality Oz gives a monstrous bloodslurping puppet at the heart of the film. The original 1960 The Little
Shop of Horrors was a ludicrous B-movie following a nerdy florist struggling in life and love, who purchases an exotic human blooddrinking plant. The remake is based on an off-broadway musical adaptation and features a charismatic soundtrack of ’60s-style bops, plus a murderers’ row of comedy legends, including Steve Martin, Rick Moranis and Bill Murray. Using the popular ’80s trope of nerdcum-hero, Oz creates a soaring romance out of an absolute farce – one that feels like it shouldn’t work, but does. ................... TRUE GRIT (2010) With the release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch and the original True Grit, 1969 was perhaps the western’s last big hurrah. The Vietnam War saw the end of America’s blind faith in moral absolutism – a genre
staple – making room for horror, sci-fi and whatever the hell
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was. 1969’s True Grit followed a 14-year-old girl hell-bent on vengeance over the murder of her father, who seeks help from an over-the-hill US Marshal and a somewhat paedophilic Texas Ranger. It won John Wayne his one and only Oscar, but aged quickly as a faithful but problematic relic. In a post-brokeback Mountain world, it might seem bonkers to do a plot-perfect remake of this hetero circle-jerk, but the Coen Brothers managed to pull it off. The 2010 adaptation is a stark lesson in how a change in tone can transform a film’s message. Suddenly, this love letter to a dying genre becomes its harshest critic. Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld all poke a horse in the eye with their performances – a welcome disruption to the classic Hollywood view of the Wild West. ...................
OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001) Look, I don’t often love a heist movie, mostly because I struggle to get behind a Ben Affleck or Mark Wahlberg type getting away with crime. Luckily, the original Ocean’s
Eleven (1960) is a thrilling parade of suffering for Hollywood elites, showing a ‘Rat Pack’ cast, including Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr, falling victim to their own hubris as they attempt to rob a Las Vegas casino. Sadly, my personal sentiments weren’t reflected in its negative critical reception – one New York Times critic called the fate of the men “ghoulish”. In the 2001 remake, Steven Soderbergh took the expectations ripped apart by the original and stitched them back together with expert precision. It might seem like a step backward, but by embracing the excess and joy of a heist (and affording lengthy screen time to George Clooney’s disarming smirk), Soderbergh’s vision came out as a superior film – colourful, twisted and thrillingly stupid. Not even Don Cheadle’s painful Cockney accent ruined it, although it did try very, very hard.