Fame isn't everything.

''You have talent. Now let's see what we can do with it.''

An updated version of the 1980 musical, which centered on the students of the New York Academy of Performing Arts.

Kay Panabaker: Jenny Garrison

Lets get this straight, did this remake want to be a remake? Fame is trying to attain a modern vantage point on students aspiring to acting or music. The characters are different but some of their stories were mirrored, the fantastic musical score of the original film was largely ignored, and the film seemed to go out of its way to hide the fact that Performing Arts is a New York City institution. None of the students have New York accents, the girl who played Jenny was so miscast as the Doris Vinsecker mimic she should have sprouted pigtails and been telephoned to central America where she obviously originated, and the street scenes pinpointing New York as the locale for this movie were minimal.

Character layering? There was minimal effort. Did you care when the girl who gets the gig with the modern dance company dumps her brokenhearted fellow PA student boyfriend? Why should you? They only appear together in 2 scenes prior to their breakup: when he is admiring her from afar as she dances a solo and when she invites him to a dinner with her parents to annoy them. When the dark girl (loosely modeled after the Coco character in the original) breaks into "Out Here on My Own," you want to laugh because she's a polar opposite: the product of a domineering father and passive mother who forbid her to do anything but continue on the classical pianist career path they launched her on. She's not out there on her own, she's being double-teamed by her stuffy parents and left to suffocate in an oppressive home environment. Ditto for other characters as well. We are left to wonder about many characters' emotional states because we haven't been made privy to what led up to them.

Embracing the original score (with added genres to be true to present day) might have saved this flick. Including "Out Here On My Own," erroneously crooned in the middle of the movie, and the feeble salute to its namesake at the end when Fame plays over the credits, didn't do it for me. in fact it seemed to drone on prolonging the agony. The new music introduced in this film isn't remarkable or memorable, although obviously great dancing and singing doesn't always equal a great film.

Kelsey Grammar, Debbie Allen, Bebe Neuwirth, and Megan Mullally give Fame a much needed boost in many scenes, but frequently diluted by the newbies. And maybe they didn't, because their portrayals of the four key administrators at this school were half-hearted and lifeless. For a school overflowing with creativity, the faculty had limited personas.
And speaking of creativity, the original film was dead on depicting the students as lovable narcissistic ego maniacs passionate about the craft they hoped to perfect. There was none of that here. The film passes through these students' four years at PA without even a hint that they've mastered their craft or grown in any way.
In short, the writing was bad, the acting mediocre, the direction was missing it's rightful flow, the editing was in sleep mode, and the score was a snore. Go watch and view the original. It might be a little dated but it's one fantastic thrill ride.

5/10