I've never seen the original Fame. Well, I wasn't exactly born when it came out, was I? But I can guarantee 100% it's better than the awful crap I saw today.
From start to finish it was an absolute cliche, but it was worse than that - a cliche is fine in the right place, like in High School Musical.
It wasn't even the actors - they could all act at least passably.
But it had absolutely no plot from start to finish! There were vague nuances - sometimes Kay Panabaker and Fit-Guy broke up - but really? Lackage of proper plot, which was mostly due to the weird format - they'd start progressing in freshman year, then SKIP, they've moved on to sophomore! And so on. So you don't really feel any sense of empathy for the characters. Some of them I didn't even work out their names till afterwards. Some of them I still don't know, but I've got IMDB for reference.
Individual character points now.
First, the protagonist. On the right above, if you were confused.
Jenny is a highly-strung girl who has trouble loosening up for her drama lessons, and can't sing anything that your grandma hasn't heard of. Naively, she then falls for the ol' "I know a casting director" spiel and nearly gets raped.
Stupid idiot. Her boyfriend warns her against it, but does she listen? No.
And do we despise this girl for her uselessness, be surprised at her lack of success? OF COURSE NOT, we love her for her klutzy crapness.
On the left, the love interest. Marco.
Admittedly this guy was fitness defined, but god, his voice was so...basically Jonas Brothers. And he had lots of teeth. I don't have masses of beef with Marco, but that's only because he had no character anyway, so there was nothing to hate.
Up there is Denise. Denise is a classical pianist, and she's brilliant. She's a bit bored with it but, as she tells Malik, "I've never tried anything else."
And then one day she tries to sing a song on a whim and SURPRISE SURPRISE she's absolutely brilliant.
And then she teams up with two other students, sings HIP HOP, and is offered
a record deal if she ditches her friends. But...she says no. She's "following her heart"
I did tell you it was cliche.
There was no character who angered me more than Malik.
Because the guy was black, he lived in a single-parent household, who's father left and was a crack addict, the sister got killed in a drive by shooting and he raps. He's also full of anger and lacking respect.
I mean REALLY. Could there be a more disgustingly stereotypical outlook than that? I can just see the bespectacled production team going "meh. we need a more street outlook. let's stick in a black guy with a past."
This made me severely sick, and I'm going to stop talking about it.
I can't even be bothered with Joy, Alice, Victor, or the camera-man bloke whose name I do not know. No personality. No nothing. And although I think Alice was *supposed* to be the bitch of the film, there was no conflict, no friction, NADA.
I will mention Kevin though. Kevin's the lefternmost of the picture above, next to Joy, Victor and Alice.
Kevin is a really bad ballet dancer from Iowa. And he's not going to be good enough to make it big (which is blatantly obvious from day one) which is sad. But one day (probably in senior year) his teacher calls him into the office, and says...Kevin. You will never make it as a professional ballet dancer.
And then there's this totally touching scene where he tries to commit suicide, which I actually thought was really well done (althoguh I wasn't quite sure why Jenny,Joy and random extra were in the subway at the same time, why he'd be cruel enough to do it in front of them and why Joy didn't chat to him when she later calls him her "best friend")
Over bracket use, sorry.
Bottom line, the damn thing was terrible. Woo.
