The modern comedy remake is among the most laughable of movie genres – and usually not in a good way.
In Hollywood’s reboot frenzy, the movie industry has increasingly turned to reviving classic comedies, only to find that few things are harder to rekindle than the elusive elements – such as Bill Murray’s timing, John Belushi’s manic energy and eyebrows – and chemistry that made the films work the first time around.
The latest attempt is Vacation, due out here on August 13, an attempt to reboot the classic National Lampoon series that was inspired by the John Hughes short story Vacation’ 58, and began with the 1983 Chevy Chase original.
Chase makes a cameo as Clark Griswold, the accident-prone family patriarch from the original films, in this new Vacation, but he has ceded the driver's seat to his son, Rusty (Ed Helms), now grown up with a family of his own.
The movie was not very eagerly anticipated in some quarters. In a column for the Hollywood Reporter, former National Lampoon editor P J O'Rourke, judging the film from its trailer, described it as "post-humoristic" and "a summer cineplex dump-fill featuring the Hangover wimp dentist as leading man." Harsh? Perhaps.
But whether screwball or satire, comedy only really works when it feels fresh and alive.
Most remakes tend to feel like they’ve been brought back from the dead, resuscitated against their wills with all the really good jokes left buried in the cemetery.
Hollywood is devoted to getting it right, though. The next big test will come in July next year when Paul Feig releases his big-budget Ghostbusters reboot. Feig, at least, has had the good sense to try to shake things up a little, recasting the leads as an all-female group, including Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig.
But there are many other remakes and reboots in various stages of quixotic development, including Meatballs, Fletch, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Police Academy.
With that in mind, here are a few lessons to draw from an often dubious tradition.
Just stay away
More often than not, the best advice is just put down the script and walk away. Such was the case for Shawn Levy's The Pink Panther in 2006, which somehow managed to earn a 2009 sequel. Steve Martin is a tremendous performer, but no one, not even him, should have been attempting to ollow in the clumsy footsteps of Peter Sellers's legendary creation, Inspector Clouseau.
Martin has been a curiously frequent remake star, including two Father of the Bride films, based on the 1950 Spencer Tracy movie, and the somewhat better Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, inspired by the 1964 Marlon Brando and David Niven film Bedtime Story.
The less said about his big screen Sgt Bilko, however, based on the old Phil Silvers TV show, the better.
Even the Coens can’t do it
It’s a testament to the difficulty of the task, if even Joel and Ethan Coen struggle with remakes.
The comedies produced by London’s Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s are movie royalty that few would have the courage to tackle.
But the Coens tried it with The Ladykillers in 2004, attempting a broader comedy that swapped Tom Hanks and Mississippi for Alec Guinness and London.
It’s among the Coens’ weaker films, though they can argue that they fell into directing it. They first signed up only to write the script, but took over the directing reins from Barry Sonnenfeld when he dropped out.
It is worth noting, though, that by staying true to the Charles Portis novel, the Coens at least did give us easily the best version of True Grit.
Russell Brand is not Dudley Moore
And Adam Sandler isn't Burt Reynolds. Brand and Sandler both have their particular talents – but neither were well suited heirs to their remakes of Arthur – Brand's 2011 version of Moore's 1981 film – and The Longest Yard, which had Sandler substituting for Reynolds in the 2005 prison-set American football comedy. Both the originals, like many comedies, drew considerably from the distinct personas of their stars, resulting in an out-of-whack chemistry in the remakes.
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick had an even higher bar to grasp for when they took over from Mel Brooks and Zero Mostel in the 2005 remake of The Producers.
If only someone had thought to try it as a Broadway musical instead ...
It’s not impossible
An unavoidable fact is that a few of the very best comedies ever made were remakes.
The zippy brilliance of Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940) came nine years after the play it was based on, The Front Page, had been turned into a film.
It would be tried again, too, in 1974 – by Billy Wilder with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau – and in 1988, with a lamentable swap of TV news for the newspaper biz, starring Reynolds.
And Wilder's Some Like it Hot, that majestically madcap 1959 comedy, was based on a 1935 French film Fanfare of Love. When the screenplay couldn't be found, producer Walter Mirisch tracked down a German remake of it for Wilder to write from.
In the movies, originality can be a mangled, many-authored thing. After all, nobody’s perfect.
artslife@thenational.ae