Anyone who loves Billy Wilder's Sabrina from 1954 will be intrigued by this re-make of the classic, which has a certain amount of charm of its own. Unfortunately, it is a remake of a classic, and it only stands on its own feet if you've never seen the first Sabrina. One of the reviews I read points out that this later Sabrina is suited to its time, the 1990s -- granted. And the script cleverly updates a lot of details from the earlier period -- but... this is where it begins to lose seriously. And it's not so much the artistic prowess of director and actors but indeed the world of the 1990s as opposed to that of the 1950s, and what that earlier world had to offer in aspirations to style, to charm, to luxury. Anyone who ever crossed the Atlantic on an ocean liner and personally knows the difference between that experience and any airline flight, including the (now defunct) Concorde, is struck by what has been lost, and it is considerable indeed (even if the original 25,000 krone inflates to one million dollars)... The original actors -- the incomparable Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden (titans indeed) -- radiated the spirit of their time, imbued as they were with the style and luxury that was theirs. The very competent but -- inevitably by comparison -- bland Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear offer up what they can from their time, the 1990s, but -- not any particular fault of theirs -- it's a paler world, and Sydney Pollack is not Billy Wilder, how could he be...
(Years later) just to say, Sabrina 1995 has grown on me... mainly by Harrison Ford's solid charm -- this remake could be called "Linus"... Audrey Hepburn entrances us with her magic sparkle, but here Harrison Ford holds everything together, and walks away with it.
(Years later) just to say, Sabrina 1995 has grown on me... mainly by Harrison Ford's solid charm -- this remake could be called "Linus"... Audrey Hepburn entrances us with her magic sparkle, but here Harrison Ford holds everything together, and walks away with it.