the Valley Girl remake might be as bad as you've heard

I said in my podcast that I want to be a positive critic. I don't want to take cheap shots at films or make a bunch of snarky comments about a film. However that does not mean that I won't say if a film does not work or if it is just bad. If you heard this movie is bad, it is pretty bad. The movie has a framing device of a mom telling this story to her daughter that I don't think adds anything to the story, which makes me wonder why the producers kept it.

Jessica Rothe stars as Julie in the remake of this classic 1980s romance. She is dating Mickey but seems to be losing interest or becoming disillusioned. (Mickey seems to be a jerk and possibly a bigger jerk than the boyfriend character in the original movie.)She meets Randy, who is not from the valley and they go out. She dumps Mickey but her friends don't like Randy. There is an incident and Julie and Randy break up. The basic plot is similar to the original but one subplot has changed. 

The leading man is not terrible but maybe they could have found a leading man with a better singing voice. Rothe does not have a great voice but hers might be better than his.  Or the songs she was given suited her talent better than the songs he was given suited his talent. Maybe the movie would have been better without the musical numbers. A few are not bad. I have seen at least one of these songs done better on the Magicians and Smash.

The original movie is a lot better. I am sorry if saying the original is better than the remake is a cliché but maybe some clichés are true. Julie's parents are a lot more likeable in the original movie. There was a scene with Julie and her dad in that film that was really sweet. There is an echo of that in this film. Julie's mom was sweeter in the original film.

I did not hate this movie but I can't recommend it.  This review from RogerEbert.com is fair. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thunder Force was bad

I did finish Thunder Force. It is bad. I did not find many of the jokes funny and I thought some of the pop culture references seemed stale or out of date. (Maybe if I liked the film more I would not mention this.)The prologue was okay, if a little long, but a major plot point established in the prologue makes no sense.  This is Ben Falcone’s fifth film as a director. He also wrote it. I have heard he is a talented actor, maybe he should stick to that. It is kind of telling that he is not directing any project that his wife is not headlining. I thought some scenes or jokes ran long.  This is not as bad as Vacation 2015. That is not saying much though. Ocativa Spencer did not save this movie.  See this  https://slate.com/culture/2021/04/thunder-force-netflix-melissa-mccarthy-ben-falcone-movies.htm  article if you want another opinion.
Read more

Who’s Harry Crumb is not John Candy’s best film but I liked it

Who’s Harry Crumb stared John Candy as an inept private detective investigating a kidnapping. Of course Harry thinks he is a great detective. (That is the source of the comedy.) His father and grandfather were great detectives. He is assisted by the kidnapped girl’s sister Nicki (Shawnee Smith). They have a good chemistry. I liked John Candy but this is a trifle. I probably should not have bought it but I did. (At least it was reasonably priced.) There was a brief bit where Harry disguises himself as an Indian American (not Native American). I don’t think it was really mean-spirited but it would not go over well today. I guess this might be considered Candy’s attempt to create an inspector Clouseau type character.
Read more

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire is not terrible

 I think this movie might be trying to do too much. Maybe the classic Ghostbusters did not need to be here. Perhaps the torch was passed in the last movie.  Also maybe since this is the fifth or sixth movie I watched this week and I listened to a bunch of podcasts, I kind of forgot who a couple of the supporting characters were for a moment or so. Perhaps the film did not reintroduce the characters well. (Heh.) I think the Stay Puff Marshmallow men did not need to be in this movie. There were not in the movie a lot but if there is another one of these movies, they don’t need to be brought back. We already have the Minions, we don’t need c grade Minions. I did not hate this film. It is not as successful as some of the other movies I saw this week (in terms of what the movies were trying to do). Some reviews of this movie mentioned there were a lot of callbacks to the first movie. There were some but they didn’t bring the movie to a halt.  (Camoes from the original cast pla...
Read more