Fame

One of the most inexplicable successes of the past 30 years, a mediocre musical set in New York’s High School for Performing Arts that became a hit, won two Oscars and spawned a six-season TV series, gets an equally inexplicable remake—inexplicable, that is, unless you think replacing Michael Gore’s disco score with hip-hop was worth going to the trouble. The result is no worse than the original, but that’s plenty bad enough. Most of Gore’s score is gone, and his script is barely recognizable in this version, written by Allison Burnett and directed by Kevin Tancharoen (neither particularly well). Seasoned pros Debbie Allen, Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Mullally and Charles S. Dutton support a cadre of pretty young faces, but the script is too trite and sketchy for anyone to make much of it.