Fame
Review - Kathryn Ryan for The Mungles on Movies
When it comes to being in the performing arts and making it professionally,
there are three key components. First, you have to have an extreme amount of
discipline. A dancer who only dances one hour a week is pretty much just someone
with a hobby. The second key component is talent. Without any talent, it doesn't
matter how hard you work on a monologue, you won't break through to the
audience. Finally, and usually a forgotten piece, is luck. With an amazing
voice, and a strong drive, you will still not land that record deal with
Timberland unless you know the right producer and get discovered at the right
time. With these three components combined, there is no stopping a person from
reaching the top. While having all three of these pieces will take you to
stardom, missing even a single one you will be only half of your true potential.
Even though this formula is applied to people the vast majority of the time, it
can be applied to other scenarios including Fame.
Fame is
about a special school in New York dedicated to the performing arts. It is known
for training only the best students. Out of the thousands of applicants, only a
hundred get in each year. The students have intense acting classes, dance
classes, and singing classes all morning and then a full load of academic
classes in the afternoon. The film follows a group of students through all four
years at the school, starting from auditions all the way to graduation. There
are many ups and downs at this school for each and every character but who has
what it takes to make it in the harsh business of show business?
This
film has many wonderful pieces to it, and some that are not so impressive. The
talent the casting directors rounded up for this film is amazing. The dancers
are incredible, the singers are mind-blowing, and the musicians are dazzling.
Even with these three amazing pools of talent, the acting was extremely
lackluster. Granted, the storyline was spread very thin (each year of school
there was only given roughly 20 minutes to capture every piece of what went on)
but no actor was convincing enough for me to care about them in the end. Sure
they had a wonderful voice, of course the danced beautifully, but I was not
attached to the character because they were not attached to their own character.
Another disappointment about this movie was in the way it was shot and
presented. The original Fame that came out in 1980 had such a raw and
compelling feel to it. It inspired the audience to think they could become
something great. This 2009 version is too poppy and too refined. The whole movie
felt like watered down version of the original.
With its PG rating, it
is a surprisingly clean movie. Granted, it is rated PG for thematic
material like teen drinking, a
sexual situation and language, it was
not crude or shocking at all. It was a movie about a high school and this film
showed it and kept a good rating for the younger audiences. I would recommend
this film for anyone over eight. Even if the acting is not amazing, this is the
kind of movie that might inspire a child to become a dancer or singer. Teenagers
are going to love this film and want to see it again and again. As for an older
audience, it will be harder to get into the groove of this one.
Bottom
line, Fame has pieces of each key component, but not enough of any of
them to make a cohesive piece. Sure, they have talent, but the poor acting
canceled the other ones. Of course it had a good amount of discipline with
portraying what a school like that is about, but the twang of tween music and
film style it took away from what it could have been. And lastly they certainly
had luck, this movie is on the coattails of theHigh School
Musical franchise and pulling fans from that group, but it will have very
little luck with the older audiences in convincing them this movie is as great
as the first. I giveFame two out of five chorus lines. While the writers
and director did show a school all about talent and determination, but it will
need sheer luck to get an older audience pull |
