When a movie's been a part of your life for over 30 years and it holds a certain place in your heart, like Rocky Horror has, you tend to be defensive of it. When I first heard of the remake, I was wary. So is it a equal to the original or was my fear confirmed.
First off, the concept is this version of Rocky Horror is that we are part of the audience at The Castle theater. We are guided into the theater by The Usherette as she sings "Science Fiction Double Feature". The performance of the song by Ivy Levan was fantastic. The theater setting allows for the occasional cuts to the audience doing participation things so that those cuts don't appear out of the ordinary.
But the theater setting leads to something that comes across as less than being meta. After Brad and Janet get their flat tire, they go to "The castle they passed back down the road a few miles". Well, the castle they go to is The Castle theater, which is run down. So basically, we are in the theater watching the film which takes place in the theater. Ehhhh???
And the dialogue most of the time is said at a rapid pace with no pause between sentences, which makes it feel unnatural. The cuts during the scenes also made the action seem unnatural also. I don't know if this was done to fit the entire show in the movie's 88 minutes in order to fit a two hour broadcast time slot that also has commercials, but it feels that the whole thing is on speed, but they did fit all the dialogue from the original movie (except for a couple of things, see below), along with all the songs (including "Planet, Schmanet, Janet" with the phrase "A mental mind *beep*" changed to "A mental mind game"), which makes the whole thing disorientating if you are accustomed to the pace of the original.
The performances were, for the most part, o.k. The only ones that I liked were Annaleigh Ashford, who played Columbia, and Adam Lambert who played Eddie. Laverne Cox, who played Frank-N-Furter, was very lackluster. Props to FOX for casting a transgender actress to play Frank, but her performance wasn't dynamic enough, which is a bad thing when it comes to Frank-N-Furter, who is supposed to stand out, but Laverne Cox wasn't able to do this, I'm sorry to say.
But the big news for fans of the original film was the appearance of Tim Curry, in his first on camera role in four years (he is basically semi-retired due to a stroke he suffered in 2012, he is mostly doing voice roles these days) as the Criminologist. His performance gave me mixed feelings as the criminologist had an assistant (Jayne Eastwood, credited as "Butler") who did what he couldn't do, like turn the pages of The Denton Affair casebook and dance on the desk during the Time Warp. But they also cut about half of his scenes in the film, which I felt they shouldn't have done, because it's Freaking Tim Curry we're dealing with here. It was great to see Tim Curry, but was sad to see him basically restricted to a chair and talking and not being able to do anything else.
The standout performances of songs were, in my opinion, Science Fiction Double Feature, Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul, Time Warp (Song was great, sounded like the version from the Roxy Cast album, but the choreography for the number was terrible), and I'm Going Home (The best number Laverne Cox did in the film).
So was the remake equal to the original? No, it wasn't. It pales in comparison to the original.
If you've never seen Rocky Horror and are wanting the remake to be your first time, skip the remake and go see the original Rocky Horror with an audience. It is the proper way to see Rocky Horror for the first time and is an experience that you'll remember for quite a while, and who knows, maybe it'll become an annual event you'll look forward to attending every year at Halloween time.
First off, the concept is this version of Rocky Horror is that we are part of the audience at The Castle theater. We are guided into the theater by The Usherette as she sings "Science Fiction Double Feature". The performance of the song by Ivy Levan was fantastic. The theater setting allows for the occasional cuts to the audience doing participation things so that those cuts don't appear out of the ordinary.
But the theater setting leads to something that comes across as less than being meta. After Brad and Janet get their flat tire, they go to "The castle they passed back down the road a few miles". Well, the castle they go to is The Castle theater, which is run down. So basically, we are in the theater watching the film which takes place in the theater. Ehhhh???
And the dialogue most of the time is said at a rapid pace with no pause between sentences, which makes it feel unnatural. The cuts during the scenes also made the action seem unnatural also. I don't know if this was done to fit the entire show in the movie's 88 minutes in order to fit a two hour broadcast time slot that also has commercials, but it feels that the whole thing is on speed, but they did fit all the dialogue from the original movie (except for a couple of things, see below), along with all the songs (including "Planet, Schmanet, Janet" with the phrase "A mental mind *beep*" changed to "A mental mind game"), which makes the whole thing disorientating if you are accustomed to the pace of the original.
The performances were, for the most part, o.k. The only ones that I liked were Annaleigh Ashford, who played Columbia, and Adam Lambert who played Eddie. Laverne Cox, who played Frank-N-Furter, was very lackluster. Props to FOX for casting a transgender actress to play Frank, but her performance wasn't dynamic enough, which is a bad thing when it comes to Frank-N-Furter, who is supposed to stand out, but Laverne Cox wasn't able to do this, I'm sorry to say.
But the big news for fans of the original film was the appearance of Tim Curry, in his first on camera role in four years (he is basically semi-retired due to a stroke he suffered in 2012, he is mostly doing voice roles these days) as the Criminologist. His performance gave me mixed feelings as the criminologist had an assistant (Jayne Eastwood, credited as "Butler") who did what he couldn't do, like turn the pages of The Denton Affair casebook and dance on the desk during the Time Warp. But they also cut about half of his scenes in the film, which I felt they shouldn't have done, because it's Freaking Tim Curry we're dealing with here. It was great to see Tim Curry, but was sad to see him basically restricted to a chair and talking and not being able to do anything else.
The standout performances of songs were, in my opinion, Science Fiction Double Feature, Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul, Time Warp (Song was great, sounded like the version from the Roxy Cast album, but the choreography for the number was terrible), and I'm Going Home (The best number Laverne Cox did in the film).
So was the remake equal to the original? No, it wasn't. It pales in comparison to the original.
If you've never seen Rocky Horror and are wanting the remake to be your first time, skip the remake and go see the original Rocky Horror with an audience. It is the proper way to see Rocky Horror for the first time and is an experience that you'll remember for quite a while, and who knows, maybe it'll become an annual event you'll look forward to attending every year at Halloween time.
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