Seriously? OMG! WTF?

All remakes are a remarkable display of an utter lack of talent and originality.

I’ll be “Honestly Sincere” with you, I’m not gonna “Put On A Happy Face” for this, and I’m sure there’s more than “One Boy” and girl who agree with me. I’m flipping this one the birdie.

Except for Bette Midler in “Gypsy,” a show that is virtually impossible to do badly, all of the musical remakes of the past decade and a half were torturous, and “Bye Bye Birdie” was one of them. It was remade for ABC television in 1995, and though it was more like the original play, it was also excruciatingly dull. All of the vitality of the inventive and exciting musical numbers and pinpoint perfect casting of the original 1963 film was stripped away in order to make a sacrifice to the altar of theater-queen purism. Mercifully it has been forgotten. Hopefully the same fate will befall Disney’s sterilized, politically-corrected made-for-TV-because-they-weren’t-good-enough-for-movie-theaters remakes of “Annie” (John Huston on a bad day is 100x better than Rob Marshall on a good day, and some of us would like Daddy Warbucks to be more manly than Miss Hannigan), “South Pacific” (AKA, let’s throw out the baby with the weirdly-color-filtered bathwater because Glenn Close wants to play Nellie) and especially “The Music Man” (God created musicals so Robert Preston could play Professor Harold Hill, and no, Matthew Broderick, you are no Robert Preston). With every one, they issue press releases paying lip service to the original play and trashing the movie (even if it was a hit), and then turn it into something only a first-year theater student (or someone who pathologically hates the movie more then they like the original play) could stomach. These are not movies, but acts of spite.

I am sick to death of how theater-queens bitch and bitch about their favorite shows being “butchered” by Hollywood. Of course when they like the changes, they call them “re-inventions”. People like that killed live theater for me. On the other hand, how many Broadway musicals that were never made into films are remembered today? Who remembered “Dreamgirls” before the movie came out (other than Diana Ross, who probably has the poster on a dartboard)? They weren’t all classics, but they deserve more respect than they get, and should be judged on their own merits. They are keeping these shows in the public consciousness, because Broadway is, quite frankly, living on borrowed time.

There are thousands of perfectly good books and plays never made into films that would make good ones. We don’t need any more remakes of any sound film or any movie versions of TV shows. And do we need more than one film of a show that is basically a dated satire (but with some darn good songs) of a now-extinct songwriting machine and racial attitudes that are now on the fringes of society?

Furthermore, Adam Shankman is a hack. “The Pacifier” was one of the worst movies of all-time. “Hairspray” is the only non-turd on his resumé; I enjoyed the film, but it’s far from unflawed. John Travolta is miscast, and the play and the film change the tone to what I can best describe as John Waters by way of Stanley Kramer. John Waters’ 1988 “Hairspray” was a movie about an overweight white girl trying to become queen of a dance show, with the Civil RIghts Movement as a backdrop. The musical (play and film) is about an overweight white girl getting involved with the Civil Rights Movement, with a local dance show as a backdrop. Waters’ tone was light, airy, and slightly subversive. The musical’s tone is bombastic, often hamfisted, and preaching-to-the-choir. And it tries too hard to recreate the campy fun that is like second nature to Mr. Waters. It’s a Norman Lear sitcom with songs, and Shankman hits the message home with a sledgehammer. Is this what we can expect from Shankman with the “Birdie” re-remake?

I’m more worried what they’re going to do to “My Fair Lady.” I thought that one was remake-proof. It was almost 100% faithful to the play, brought back two of the three Broadway stars, kept all the songs, and won 8 Oscars. It was also a splendid, gorgeous piece of entertainment that they could never do today. It has style and substance to spare, and one of the all-time great musical scores.

zac efron or rob pattison will probably be cast as conrad…… god help us all