Running Scared was just sad. How can you improve on Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, and Joey Pants with a parakeet on his head? You can't. They shouldn't have tried.

They tried? When? Wait...it wasn't a TV show.

Running Scared was just sad. How can you improve on Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, and Joey Pants with a parakeet on his head? You can't. They shouldn't have tried.

Sadly, the only part about that movie I remember is when they park their car in a bad neighborhood and come back to discover someone has spray-painted "Undercover Cop Car" on it. (If I'm even remembering the right movie). Though it still makes me laugh.

Yes, it (making old TV shows into movies) CAN work, but they seem to keep missing what about the show made it good, or at least popular, when it was on. And they keep "reinventing" it until it's unrecognizable, so that it'll have only a thin, superficial, resemblance to the original.

I think they recycle because there are only so many to go around. IMDB finds me dupes on searches way more often than I expect.

Running Scared, a la Hines/Crystal is a great great movie. Huh. Now I'm looking at that slash there.

I think Eminem looks like he has decent chops. I don't know the source material though, and would be startled if he could pull off what's been described here.

Though, hey, I was startled to like 8 Mile, so there you go.

They must be planning a complete "revisioning."

IIRC, yes. And it actually sounds interesting.

Also, while there's the head-start on account of the semi-autobiographical nature of the movie, the boy kicked all kinds of ass in 8 Mile.

Speaking of--from today's IMDB:

The BBC's comedy unit and its movie unit are reportedly working together to produce theatrical motion pictures based on the publicly supported broadcaster's hit sitcoms. The BBC website said today that Kenton Allen, creative head of BBC Comedy Talent, is heading up a scheme that, in Allen's words, would allow its comedy stars "to paint on a bigger canvas." Among the shows reportedly being considered for a big-screen version is The Office, starring Ricky Gervais. An American version of the show, starring Steve Carell in the Gervais role, currently airs on NBC. The BBC has a long history of producing theatrical films, but most have not been distributed outside the U.K.

Last night megan walker and I were talking about American remakes of French comedies, which are usually - at best - crap. If they're going to reinvent it - new actors, new concepts to appeal to a new generation - why not use it as a jumping-off point and do it fresh, instead of trying for some kind of nostalgic appeal?

why not use it as a jumping-off point and do it fresh, instead of trying for some kind of nostalgic appeal?

I think The Brady Bunch (which I never saw) succeeded with nostalgia--it seemed to be liked. As for Starsky & Hutch, it was both, kinda. Nostalgia tuned with looking back and mocking ourselves. It just wasn't in the same genre as the original, which I think pissed many off.

BB might have worked if it had been set at the time of the original series. But making them an early-'70s style family in the early '90s made it "watch from the hall" fodder. Which really isn't what you want on a plane.

The Brady Bunch was quite good, I thought. Very sly, and not a straight-up remake. I mean, the bell bottoms are the point-- those people are transplanted into the nineties, which made them complete dorks.