A few months ago I took on the (ultimately unfortunate) assignment of reviewing Michael Haneke's own remake of his brilliant 1997 commentary, Funny Games. While the original film was horrifyingly novel, leaving me in a cold sweat by the final freeze-frame of Arno Frisch's deranged smile, the remake found me struggling to remain awake. As my review attested, the remake simply did not challenge me; it did not heighten my appreciation or understanding of the original. In short, it lacked any raison d'ˆtre beyond Haneke's financial enrichment.
And this, it struck me, has been the case with perhaps the majority of film remakes. There are only two affirmative defenses to a remake: either the director has something new to say, or there is a new and better way of saying it. I have compiled a short list of some of the more egregiously unnecessary film remakes. It would be best for all of us simply to disregard their existence altogether - the originals stand quite well on their own.
King Kong (1976)
At least Peter Jackson's 2005 re-remake brought us back toward Merian Cooper's and Ernest Schoedsack's 1933 classic by helping us forget the 1976 flop. Ironically, given four decades of technological advance, Kong does not appear significantly more robotically sophisticated than the 1933 incarnation - an inadvertent tribute to the ingenuity of the original filmmakers. But perhaps what made this film suffer most is that its time had passed. While an exotic island inhabited by a gargantuan gorilla whetted the Depression-era audience's more provincial appetite for adventure and escape, the notion would not have been taken seriously in the '70s. In a way, the film could not escape its own fabulousness, leaving it as nothing more than a kitschy burlesque.
Cape Fear (1991)
There is perhaps no actor in film history better able to frighten us through his sneer alone than Robert Mitchum. In Cape Fear (1962), Mitchum as vindictive ex-convict Max Cady needs to do nothing more than satanically expire cigar smoke to convince us that he is capable of making good on his ominous threats. On the other hand, in Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake, Robert De Niro as Cady assumes a level of buffoonery we were not treated to again until Meet the Fockers. Combing the campiest elements of Deliverance and The Silence of the Lambs, Scorsese fashioned a self-parodying caricature of an originally brilliant thriller. Replacing baleful innuendo with graphic, gratuitous violence simply because the Hays Code lapsed does not a compelling film make.
The Truth About Charlie (2002)
Audrey Hepburn. Cary Grant. Paris. What other ingredients could one request in making a brilliant film? As Stanley Donen's 1963 classic comic thriller Charade demonstrate, sometimes the sum of a film's parts is good enough. Forty years later, Cary Grant is replaced by Marky Mark, and Audrey Hepburn by Thandie Newton, in Jonathan Demme's The Truth About Charlie. Demme, in extremely poor taste, misunderstands the dynamic that made the original great - sucking the life out of the comic tension underlying the action and romance. Indeed, simply throwing in cell phones, laptops and profanity does not qualify as a refreshing take on the story. And the awkward interplay between Wahlberg and Newton leaves us salivating for Hepburn and Grant.
Psycho (1998)
Gus Van Sant's 1998 butchery of Alfred Hitchcock's perfect Psycho (1960) will stand out, maybe for all time, as the worst remake ever. This probably should not have been a surprise. After all, what made the 1960 version great was its groundbreaking narrative style - killing off the seeming heroine midway through the film in a preliminary climax of unprecedented editorial finesse. By 1998, scores of films and filmmakers had already reaped inspiration from Hitchcock's mastery; to attempt a shot-by-shot remake of the 1960 version still boggles the mind in its superfluity. Add to that Vince Vaughn as the matricidal boy-next-door Norman Bates, and a complete misunderstanding on the part of the director of chiaroscuro, and you get a movie even more satirical than Scary Movie.
