A Look at the Summer Movie Remakes

This 2005 summer movie season has given us not one, not two, but three remakes. Today we examine them.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

This is the only one of these three remakes I have seen, but that's not going to stop me from commenting on all of them. This is the second adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's book, the first being 1971's Willy Wonka starring Gene Wilder. I have never read the book and haven't seen the Wilder version in years, so I don't really recall how the new movie differs other than how Wilder and Johnny Depp played the part of Wonka. Wilder's Wonka was incredibly angry, while Depp's Wonka was incredibly gay. Wilder's Wonka was all like "Fuck you Charlie. You drank the Fizzie Lifty Drink, you lost! Shut up. You lost, Charlie! Get the fuck out of my half office, and burn in hell!"

At least that's how I remember it.

Johnny Depp's Wonka, on the other hand, was just a crazy foppish little homosexual. I have a theory that they made his Wonka as an parallel for Michael Jackson. Think about it. Here we have Willy Wonka, an eccentric millionaire with extremely pale white skin and wacky clothing, who has a strained relationship with his father. He lives in seclusion in a giant building that's irresistible to children. He then invites a select few children inside his home and proceeds to molest them.

Bad News Bears

Billy Bob Thorton stars in the remake of the 1976 Walter Matthau film. Those are some big shoes Billy Bob has to fill, the original Bears was one of the funniest movies of all time. At least that's what they say. I have never seen it, though I probably should because I hear it features children smoking, which is always cool. However, I have seen the episode of Clerks: the Animated Series which parodies Bad News Bears, so I'll just assume both movies play out exactly like that episode. Including the ending where the baseball team rescues Randal from the slave labor camp in the mountains, where he was forced to help construct a pyramid.

The Dukes of Hazzard

A remake of the old TV series. The biggest problem I have with this new version is that they cast Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg. Now anything with Burt Reynolds in it is instant gold, so I'm sure this new movie will sweep the Oscars. Burt is the man. But here they have Burt playing the villain, which means he'll have to lose in the end. That's total bullshit. Burt Reynolds has never faced defeat before in his life. During the Vietnam War, he even fought for North Vietnam just so he could be on the winning side while the rest of America lost.

I'm sure the only way the movie could end is this: Bo and Luke drive home in the General Lee to tell Uncle Jesse and Daisy that they saved the farm. Everyone celebrates putting one over on Boss Hogg. Then Burt Reynolds drives up in a dune buggy and kills everyone with a shotgun. And then he rocks out to Meatloaf. Movie ends.

By the way, the Dukes' Uncle Jesse isn't nearly as cool as Full House's Uncle Jesse. Have Mercy!

Ok, now that I think about it, there were more than three movie remakes this summer, in fact there were as many as six. But I'm not too familiar with Bewitched, or Herbie, and the new Longest Yard film came out around the same time as Revenge of the Sith, so I was kind of busy that month. The only other movie I saw was the new Batman, so I'll comment on that sometime later.

Batman Begins

This movie is way better than the last couple of Batman movies, but I still prefer Tim Burton's films by far. And that new Batman guy (whoever he was) was no where near as good as Adam West was. And apparently this Batman has throat cancer, judging by the way he always speaks while in costume.

A bunch of things bugged me about the new film. Because for being about five hours long, they sure didn't take the time to clear up the hundred or so plot holes they had lying around. Maybe if the movie didn't spend two and a half hours in the beginning with young Bruce Wayne just hanging out in the Himalayas they could have cleared those up. But as Johnny pointed out, the scenes with Bruce Wayne training with the ninjas was awesome because it made it seem that the movie was going to involve Batman commanding an army of ninjas.

On anther Batman note, the Boomerang channel has been rearing the kickass 90's Batman cartoon, that show was awesome. Boomerang is a great channel, it shows old cartoons like the Snorks. Man the Snorks was awesome, they were like the Smurfs but they lived under the sea and didn't suck ass.

Ok, I'm done.

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