Fame
Maybe I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses when I say Fame '09 was good. I can hear you snicker and think to yourself, "not true". Yes, okay, it wasn't that good but you have to admit that the actors had talent.
While I haven’t seen the original made in 1980 the storyline this time round is the same, it’s about a group of performing arts students in New York, and looks at their training at the school, following them from their auditions to graduation. From what I've heard the characters have changed - female character became male character, and obviously there are many new pop-culture references.
Denise - the training classical pianist has a very powerful Alicia Keys voice, and uses it in the movie when she is encouraged to “have fun”. Another great singer is the all-American teen-heartthrob Marco who auditioned with “Ordinary People” by John Legend. Geeky Neil was a different kettle of fish though, he couldn't act, but he probably was chosen to be in the school for his filming aspirations. I don't think that this was the right school for Neil. Go to a film school.
Maybe I'm about to rip up the original Fame, but I didn't like the storyline.
It was made in short segments of each of the years that they were training to be performing artists. So divide the four years that they were at school into playing time - 107mins, that's only 25 minutes per year, this is not enough time for characters to develop or for the audience to feel connected. I felt like one character would have a storyline - for example Neil was scammed by a movie producer and then suddenly the movie would skip to the next year. Not enough time for processing.
Either way, I was sucked in with its sentiment, I cried, I laughed, but as to be expected it didn’t change me in any way like a really good movie does.