Day 263 - 9/20/09 - Movie #263
BEFORE: Nope, I've never seen it. I've seen bits of it, but never the whole thing - I never liked the theme song, and I was forced to sing "I Sing the Body Electric" back in junior high chorus...plus I have a deep-seated hatred for all things choreographed by Debbie Allen. Never watched the TV series either, but the remake is coming out soon...
THE PLOT: A chronicle of the lives of several teenagers who attend a New York high school for students gifted in the performing arts.
AFTER: The Performing Arts high school was a place where the students in the music, dance and drama departments all competed against each other to determine which group was the most moody and self-involved... my wife went to LaGuardia high-school, which this was based on, and she has confirmed that this part of the movie was spot-on.
They're all shown at a time in their lives when they supposedly have so much potential, that they can barely make it through lunch period without an impromptu song and dance number breaking out in the cafeteria. And if you want to see what their field trips to the Natural History Museum look like, just check out "On the Town"...
The most telling part for me was when the junior-year kids discover that one of the most promising seniors (who graduated when they were freshmen) is waiting tables in a Times Square restaurant. See, kids, the world needs waiters, too - maybe even more than it needs another TV star. If every waiter with acting aspirations was a working actor, there would be no one left to take my order, or bus my table!
And as for Coco, I have no sympathy for someone who falls for the old "screen-test in creepy guy's apartment" bit. I mean, come on, that video camera looks like it cost all of $10 - and nobody MADE her take her top off, couldn't she just have said "No", or walked out of the guy's apartment? I mean, take your top off or don't take your top off, but don't take your top off and cry about it, nobody wants to see that.
I shouldn't have been so Debbie Allen-shy, she's barely in the film (though her horrible choreography permeates...) and there are good cameos by Richard Belzer and Anne Meara - but what of the students themselves? How "fame"-ous did they become after starring in this film?
Paul McCrane (Montgomery McNeil) had a good run on "ER", but Irene Cara (Coco) dropped off the radar after roles in "City Heat" and "D.C. Cab". Barry Miller (Ralph) had a good role in "Peggy Sue Got Married" and a bit role in "The Last Temptation of Christ", but Gene Anthony Ray (Leroy) and Lee Curreri (Bruno) had...well, they had the "Fame" TV series to look forward to.
So there you go kids - look at the person on your left, and the person on your right - one of you is going to make it, and one of you is going to be taking my dinner order. It's hard for me to assign a rating here - the movie didn't really wow me, so I'm being noncommittal -
RATING: 5 out of 10 leg-warmers
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Isaac Mizrahi did pretty well for himself, didn't he?
ReplyDeleteJust a quick note, the orchestra conductor seen in a couple shots at the end was one of my teachers in high school, and the drama teacher was an actual drama teacher in the school. Oh, and if you remember the show, the girl who played Coco, Erica Gimpel I think her name was, actually went to the school, I think she was a year ahead of me, as was Jennifer Aniston, who had nothing to do with the show or the movie... That is all. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, I too have never seen this film, though some people are excited about the new film, so I guess Fame must have been quite popular at some point...
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