When I was mooching around the stands at Empire Big Screen a few weeks ago, I watched the trailer for the remake of Footloose. I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I know the original is cheesy and a bit rubbish but that doesn’t stop me loving it and I don’t want to see it destroyed. This new version seems to be a mixture of scenes and dialogue lifted straight from the original with some updated sequences to please the MTV generation. With this, and news of a Dirty Dancing remake playing on my mind I started to wonder if there was such a thing as a good remake.
I stood in front of my DVD collection and had a look at the few remakes I own. I also gently stroked films like Trading Places as if trying to reassure them that they would never face the indignity. Turns out that I don’t have very many remakes, preferring to stick with originals, but I do have a couple I will admit to liking a lot. Here are some good (and bad) remakes:
I’m not sure if this is technically a remake or better categorised as a musical adaptation. The smart, sophisticated comedy The Philadelphia Story is set to music with a cast just as fantastic as the original. Full of pure joy this is one version that I actually prefer to the original.
Like High Society it’s hard to know if this is a remake or a musical retelling of the story. I love this version of John Waters’ kitsch classic – it’s so full of humour and fun that it’s impossible not to think this is a great new version of the original.
This isn’t so much a copy-cat feature as simply a film with the same name as an earlier film. There’s only the very vaguest relationship between the original British classic and its American counterpart – lovable crooks in Minis attempt a robbery in Italy and I quite like this movie. I still look out for news of the rumoured sequel The Brazilian Job but alas that doesn’t seem to be happening.
This live action version of Disney’s classic animation isn’t a brilliant film but it’s saved from being entirely bad by the wonderful performance of Glenn Close as Cruella DeVille.
The original Cape Fear was a tense, nightmarish psychological thriller but the update loses much of its menace by being a bog-standard revenge thriller. It’s not a bad film, it”s just a bit pointless.
I’ve not seen the original (although I do have it and intend to soon), but I have seen the Tim Burton rehash and absolutely hated it. If the source material is as great as I’m always told that it is then this surely must be a prime example of a very, very bad remake. After all, it is a very, very bad film.
This is possibly one of the most horrible new versions of a great film ever maid. Gus van Sant decided to remake Hitchcock’s classic with Vince Vaughn playing Norman Bates. It was virtually a shot-by-shot recreation of the original and proved that being a great director is about more than simply following a set of instructions.
I know there’s hundreds more remakes and I haven’t even touched on the subject of Hollywood mangling great foreign language films, but I think I’ve probably answered my own question. Yes, there can be good, even great, remakes – they just don’t come along that often. It seems to help if there’s an attempt at making a distinction between the original and the new version. The big question now is – why remake old films? Why not come up with some new and exciting ideas?
Like you said, it doesn’t come along often but yes it is entirely possible. I think Rise of the Planet of the Apes is one good example.