Fame

Remakes suck, and unfortunately, Fame, the teenybopper, PG-rated update to the 1980s R-rated original, is the rule and not the exception.

Not that there aren't nice dance moves and good singing, especially from Naturi Naughton, a member of the now defunct-pop group 3LW and last seen playing the naughty rapper Lil' Kim in Notorious.

As in the original, this film follows a bunch of kids with dreams of fame, for lack of a better word, as they go through four years at New York's High School of Performing Arts. There's singing and dancing in the cafeteria, though strangely no singing and dancing in the streets and on top of taxicabs that we relished in the original.

Dreams get crushed, hearts broken, in the brutal world of the performing arts. Like Debbie Allen said, "You want fame? Well, fame costs and right here is where you start paying it... in sweat."

But the 1980s version had memorable characters you cared about, like Leroy, (played in the movie and on the series by the late Gene Anthony Ray) the kid from the rough side of the streets who had raw dancing ability, a rebel's attitude and soul. You had the incomparable Irene Cara, who played Coco in the film and sang that song "Fame (Can You Feel It)."

The film delved into dark topics, including homosexuality, the pressures to be thin in the dance industry, suicide and the exploitation of naive students willing to do almost anything to get the glitter and the glam.

All that is lost in this smiley-faced remake. Glimpses of the character's lives are seen but never the whole, the movie so busy getting to the dancing and singing that the kids obsessed with American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance want to see.

The original Fame was edgy and real. The remake is a movie thrown together to appease the masses, drained of any soul, any passion, and nothing but cliches.

Good actors such as Charles S. Dutton, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Mullally and Kelsey Grammer make do with what they have, which isn't much. And some of the fresh faces stand out, such as Naturi Naughton and Collins Penne, who plays Malik, an angry aspiring rapper/actor who starts off with an interesting story arc but one that never goes anywhere. But it's not enough to save this skeleton of a movie.

Hollywood these days is littered with remakes and unnecessary sequels. Word is that a remake of the horror/comedy classic An American Werewolf in London is in the works, the idea of which is more frightening than the actual movie, which is pretty scary itself.

Fame is a very good reason for Hollywood to just stop doing remakes. Try being original for once. Oh, that's right...this is Hollywood we're talking about.