9-30-09 Movie Review: Fame

Only one noncommercial movie showing to announce, but it’s a dandy: Sunday night at 7:30, the Blank Page at 917 West Douglas will show Paddy Chyefsky’s Network, the takeoff on television with Peter Finch winning an Academy Award yelling “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”, also starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, and Ned Beatty, under the direction of Sidney Lumet. That’s 7:30 Sunday in the Blank Page, 917 West Douglas, and it beats anything else currently in town.

Such as Fame, a tepid remake of a 1980 original that Leonard Maltin’s Film and Video Guide only gives 2 ½ stars to start with.

It’s worth noticing that despite its title, Fame does not cite fame as any of the goals of any of the students at New York’s High School of Performing Arts, and the big speech about show business near the end does not mention ego satisfaction of much of anything the movie has been about; it discusses theatre as a means of bringing people together and all manner of other things that have never been emphasized by Kelsey Grammer as the Stern Teacher, Charles Dutton as the Fatherly Teacher, Bebe Neuwirth as the Concerned Teacher, or any of the other stereotypes among staff and students over a four-year period during which the students evidently never get good enough to deserve a full-length number in the Big Show at the end. They just get snippets, as if they could manage a few steps but not a dance; the rapper gets good-sized bit, if that is a sign of anything worthwhile.

The whole movie, in fact, is so full of characters and substories that it would take a much better screenwriter than Allison Burnett and a much better director then Kevin Tancharoen to develop anything or anybody, even if the cast showed a good deal more promise than it ever does. Naturi Naughtonas the pianist who wants to be a singer suggests promise, but is so consistently drowned out by what should be her accompaniment that it’s hard to say; another character manages to almost drown himself out with his piano. Maybe it’s my ears; let’s hope so.

The whole encyclopedia of musical clichés makes an appearance: the tyrant parent who insists on a classical career, the slum kid full of rage, the shy girl full of fear, the kid with talent but no feeling, and the plot elements like the Big Chance that comes too soon, the soloist that gets a Big Chance if she’ll leave the band, event eh casting couch, in a PG-rated fashion, with an unreasonable hot-tempered boy friend to add to the drama.

But it’s not easy to get interested in undeveloped characterizations by performers with little or no charisma, and there isn’t time for more than snippets and fragments calling for stock responses. Strangely, the musical numbers seem to be longer in the freshman and sophomore years, before the training has a lot of effect. But at least there is some individuality then; all the school seems to produce is a lot a flash and dash.

Maybe this sort of thing is impossible in a single movie; A Chorus Line gets only two stars from Maltin, too, and it had some spectacular talent to display. I even remember A Chorus Line with some affection. Fame I don’t expect to remember at all, and I don’t expect to see many of the cast again, and I will certainly not be looking for the screenwriter or director.