My initial impression of the 2009 remake of "Fame" was favorable, having seen only the scene where the failed ballet dancer contemplated taking his life in a subway station. I was impressed by the directorial style, where everything around him faded into a distant noise as he became overwhelmed by his feelings of hopelessness and futility. This is, unfortunately, the most striking scene of the whole movie, and not really enough to justify sitting through it for a whole two hours (I saw the "Extended Dance Edition"). If the rest of the movie would have been made with the same care, it would have been much more resonant and enjoyable. Unfortunately it was not, and this is why I was so disappointed with it.Upon viewing the complete movie from the beginning, I was taken with director Kevin Tancharoen's use of the cinema verité style in order to give the movie more of a documentary feeling. Unfortunately, his attempts at realism were severely undermined by the flat, one- dimensional characters, clichéd situations, and (for me) underwhelming dance and musical production numbers. Add to this the fact that the rather sloppily written screenplay attempts to cover too much ground for the movie's running time, trying to focus on so many characters that I was not able to really connect in a substantial way with any of them. The movie ultimately has a rather sterile, detached feel to it, and I found it difficult to really care about the characters because they came across as stock types (the shy, naïve starlet who comes this close to be taken advantage of, the angry inner city black youth, the selfish dancer who only cares about stardom). The production numbers did not impress me either, although Naturi Naughton did display an impressive vocal range and stage presence. This is especially worrisome to me, as I watched the "Extended Dance Edition". None of the dance numbers really stayed with me...I've seen better on shows like "Britain's Got Talent".The more experienced actors (Kelsey Grammar, Bebe Neuwirth, Charles Dutton, Megan Mullaly, and Debbie Allen) had little to do except for portray the teachers, which also come off as your typical authoritative/mean/condescending/inspirational stock types. The younger actors are fine in their roles, although not outstandingly charismatic or memorable. I can't really complain about the acting, though, since the script is so poorly conceived the actors simply don't have much to work with. Not even Meryl Streep and Laurence Olivier could have saved this one.One thing I did notice was a direct rip-off of a scene from "Mr. Holland's Opus", which is, in my mind, a far superior film whose characters truly resonate with the audience - a student does a rendition of the old Gershwin standard "Someone to Watch Over Me," and is instructed by the teacher that she needs to have a better grasp of what the words mean. The scene is slightly different here, but couldn't they have at least have chosen a different song? This, to me, is symbolic of what is wrong with this movie - lazy, formulaic plotting, stock characterizations, and a poorly conceived script. There are so many characters on display that at the end of the movie, I didn't know what happened to all of them. What happened to the aspiring director at the end? Or the dancer's best friend (and it was news to me that they were friends until the end of the movie?) The filmmakers didn't even so much as put an epilogue on the end that you could read in order to figure out what became of the characters. Overall, I felt like the movie was a waste of my time. Disappointing.

First of all let me make this clear; I LOVE MUSICALS. Even when they're not great, a little song and dance always gives me something to look forward to in a movie. Second of all, let me make this also clear; my expectation of a remake is never set too high. Same as sequels, very rarely do they capture the magic of the original movie.So I didn't watch this movie expecting to be blown away, to be honest I barely expected anything; but somehow it managed to disappoint. Really.The actors all look the same, well at least the boys do, they're all safe, mediocre choices. And that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie- safe and mediocre. They tried to have all the components of a hit (complete with a hip hop performance); teenage drama, success, failure, betrayal and even a make over. But the lack of emotional depth in all the characters (even the angry kid whose sister got killed) and story lines makes you lose interest half way through.Sorry Fame 2.0, you sucked.

Fame 2 is a remake of the original Fame (1980). The film is about students at a performing arts school. We follow the teenagers through the high school as they try pursue their dreams while dealing with school work, family problems and love. The film shows the downsides and upsides on being a young adults taking advantage of their talents. It shows positive and negative sides of the entertainment business, how the business take advantage of them, but also how they can get what they want as long as they work hard enough.The film is exactly like the original, boring. Fame 2 isn't your average chick flick, but you loose interest after a couple of minutes and a lot of the scenes are very predictable. There's a lack of humour and the film didn't do anything new with the storyline from the original film. However, the music acts and choreography in the dance scenes are very good and it show that the cast has put a lot of work into it. But this doesn't make up for the bad script or scenes, which is why you must be desperate to manage to watch the entire film.for more reviews go to: http://malinlystad.blogspot.com

Now this movie was pretty terrible, now I can see why some girls would actually like this movie somewhat though. Mainly because of the characters performances when they take the stage, which is the only positive thing going for this movie. Everything else just sucks, plain and simple. The plot is one of the worst I seen in theaters, mainly revolves around bunch of students trying to reach fame. And the students that doesn't deserve it doesn't make it and the ones that does makes it. The thing is when it comes to most of the characters, I did not care what so ever if they succeed or not, especially the one that wants to become a director, the kid is just a dreamer nothing more and was hoping he doesn't make it so he won't end up making a crappy movie like this one. I especially hated the constantly singing dude, he just seemed like a douchenozzle and a fake the girl he was with is annoying as hell and freaking stupid. So yeah the plot of this movie was just irritating to watch, only positive thing about this mess was the performance when the characters take the stage that is all.3.5/10