This is it – I’m stumped. I can understand how ambiguity and open ends are used in films to trick critics into thinking they’re deep. I can understand how commentary on important social issues like racism or sexism are used in films to trick critics into thinking their message justifies their storytelling. I can understand how many “oppositional” techniques designed purely to do what Hollywood normally wouldn’t do are used in films to trick critics into thinking they’re immensely creative, groundbreaking, and historic. What I cannot fathom is how a few needless remakes that do not offer the creative spins and twists on their stories required to justify their existence are making the critics out to be as gullible as a four-year-old.
The beauty of retelling an already established story lies within the creative approach one brings to the story that no one else would have seen in it. Ever After tells the story of “Cinderella” without using a conventional fairy godmother, instead relying on a brilliant historic figure to supply science as a substitute for magic. Muppet Christmas Carol integrates the prose of the book that most other film adaptations up to that point (if not all of them) omitted, which is already enough to set it apart from its predecessors, and that’s without mentioning that Bob Cratchit is played by a puppet frog. While the 1970s Carrie film by Brian de Palma seems to emphasize the fantasy in the story (from what I can gather from its surrealistic trailers), the remake (or arguably “additional adaptation of the novel”) is clearly very grounded in reality. The examples can go on endlessly.
Then we have Cinderella. I hope I never see Cinderella. From every clip I’ve seen from it thus far, and everything I’ve heard about its story, I can tell that it’s as needless as can be. This is followed by Jungle Book, and I could tell from the trailer that it had little to offer, and that I would never appreciate this movie as much as the original animated film. Furthermore, I also knew that this was Disney’s fifth movie based on this story, including the original animated film and its sequel, which makes it seem especially redundant. This is a level of stupidity I can’t handle. However, since I was advised by friends I trusted that the movie was worth seeing, I went to see it.
Having seen the original animated film, I had no good reason to see this rehash, and to those friends of mine who encouraged me to pay money to see it, I must respond with Fozzie’s great immortal line: “Shaaaaaame on you!” This movie isn’t terrible, but its best elements are mostly just the things Disney had already gotten right back in the 1960s. The visuals that I heard were so stunning offered me nothing, and they make me hesitate to call it a “live-action remake” instead of “the CGI version.” The fact that there are only two musical numbers in the film, the first of which doesn’t begin until about 50 minutes in, creates a jarring effect because they don’t feel like they fit in with the rest of the movie. To make matters worse, the best number on the soundtrack is Scarlett Johansson’s recording of “Trust in Me,” and I was beside myself with disappointment when I found it had been cut from the film. Again, this movie isn’t terrible, and I might have even said it was good had I not known its best elements were borrowed, not organic. Knowing what I know, however, it strikes me as a film that’s extremely and distinctly “fine, I guess” – it’s so-so soup. I am left shrugging and squinting, trying to figure out how in the world everyone has been tricked into thinking Disney is justified in charging admission for this.
Let me make this perfectly clear: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a better remake than 2016’s Jungle Book, not because it’s a great movie, but because it looked at the tens upon dozens upon scores of adaptations of the story that had been done, and it left them behind to find an entirely new way of looking at the source material.
Now bring me some psychologists, some marketing strategists, and the Amazing Randi, because it shouldn’t be possible for critics and audiences to be duped on this scale.
