FOX
There has been much written and said in the months since FOX announced they were going to air a remake of the beloved cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show (currently scheduled for October 20), and most of it has been in the negative save for the casting of original Frank-N-Furter Tim Curry in the role of The Criminologist (aka The Narrator). But until now, no one has seen much except for a few brief online teasers. Well, FOX made the first thirty minutes of the new movie available to the press for a hot minute (it’s no longer available for review), and it’s safe to say that any opinions regarding the movie that have come from this particular site are valid.
When the project was announced, the network and producers said they wanted to update the film, bring something new and different to it for a modern (i.e. younger) audience who may not have ever seen the original — and come on, it’s been on HBO, Logo runs it incessantly, and the studio has released the film every five years in a new “anniversary” package. It’s not the once hard to find “midnight movie” it used to be when I first started attending those screenings back in the 1980s. Having seen the movie over 100 times, I was still willing to go into this new version with an open mind. After seeing the first half hour though, the biggest problem with the movie is that the producers don’t ever want to let the long-time fans forget the original.
But let’s start at the beginning. Replacing the film’s iconic lips singing the opening theme song “Science Fiction, Double Feature” with the stage show’s usherette was a stroke of genius. Ivy Levan puts a sultry spin on the song, and I enjoyed the use of classic movie posters to illustrate the films mentioned in the song (which went away during the second verse). Levan strolls through a grand old movie palace to continue the song, seating people, telling others to get their feet off the backs of the seats, and taking a seat appropriately “in the back row” as the film cuts to a close up of her red lips for the last line. A fine wink to the original. Well, okay, this might not be so bad after all.
And then …
A wide shot of the theater as a film begins to unspool. The 20th Century FOX fanfare as heard in the original film (all tinkly piano) plays and the title appears on screen. Then a lightning bolt comes out of nowhere, and everything goes black. The next scene picks up at the wedding of Ralph and Betty Hapschatt, where we meet our heroes Brad Majors and Janet Weiss. But now things begin to feel a bit off because the actors, Victoria Justice and Ryan McCartan, seem fresh out of high school, much too young for these roles. As they launch into “Dammit Janet,” both have strong voices but the staging of the number with the use of other key cast members as funeral attendees (and yes, we have to assume Laverne Cox is the very tall, veiled woman in black) only takes us back to how the original used cast members in peripheral roles. (Of course, if you’ve never seen the original, then this would seem a novel idea and one you may miss on first glance.) The other problem with the actors — and this is more a directorial complaint — is that they ape the phrasing and halting pauses of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon. They really bring nothing new to the characters.
As in the original, after the song we are introduced to The Criminologist. It’s a treat, at first, to see Tim Curry again considering his recent health issues, but then you realize the stroke he had not too long ago has left him incapacitated to the point that he needs an assistant to turn the pages of the dossier which help sets up the characters. I give him credit for taking the role, but as a long-time fan it’s just heartbreaking to see him in this condition.
Back to the story proper, Brad and Janet are in the car, it’s raining and Richard Nixon is on the radio! The entire scene right down to Brad getting out of the car to kick the tire and Janet following behind him is a shot-for-shot remake from the original. The delivery of the dialog is the same as well. Again there’s nothing new here to make the long-time fans happy. As Brad and Janet sing about the light “over at the Frankenstein place” they somehow arrive at the same theater where the movie began. A ruined version of it, but it’s the theater complete with a wrecked marquee. They could only afford the one exterior location?
During the scene we see one motorcyclist pass, but when Brad and Janet arrive at the “castle” and meet Riff Raff — again with identical phrasing of the dialog — there is a major change: with a flash of lightning in the original, Riff quickly ushered the couple in when they saw the line of motorcycles. Here, there are no motorcycles and the two practically have to let themselves in as Riff lets the door close as he walks away. Now I enjoyed Reeve Carney on Penny Dreadful, but he’s here doing an impression of Richard O’Brien in a terrible black and white wig that looks like a leftover from a Party City post-Halloween sale. When he launches into “The Time Warp,” Carney convulses wildly during the opening verse, and the decision was made to keep the song faithful to the stage version, not the movie version, so Magenta doesn’t get to join Riff with the “not for very much longer” line. And really, the less said about Christina Milian’s Magenta the better (main problem — she too looks like a high schooler).
During “The Time Warp,” it always looked like they were at a Chinese buffet in the teasers, but it turns out they’re actually in the lobby of the theater and what looks like a buffet table is a concession stand. The choreography is serviceable and the addition of a band is novel, but when we cut back to The Criminologist reciting the dance moves, it gets sad again as his assistant has to do the actual moves. “The Time Warp” leads to the big moment we’ve all been waiting for with the arrival of Frank-N-Furter himself. And then the entire concept falls completely apart.
For the uninitiated, Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a man. A man who sings a song called “Sweet Transvestite.” He’s a man who wears women’s clothing, which in the original had Tim Curry in a sparkly corset, panties, fishnets and very high heels, not to mention his iconic make-up. He was clearly a man dressed as a woman, someone very comfortable with himself. In the new version, we first see Frank-N-Furter in a billowing cape with a monstrous mask/headpiece covering “his” face. It really looks like something Grace Jones would have worn back in the day (or even today). The mask and cape come off and we get our first good look at Laverne Cox, clearly NOT a man in any sense of the word. While the producers think that casting a trans woman is a bold new direction for this story, it’s not. Laverne as Frank is wearing a very feminine, beaded, Ann-Margret-style leaotard/showgirl outfit which shows her body off to great advantage. And that’s the problem — you can’t sing the line “I’m not much of a man by the light of day” with a pair of voluptuous breasts clearly on display. Which also negates the entire concept of the song “Sweet Transvestite.” A woman, trans or not, in women’s clothing is not a transvestite. Period. Nothing against Laverne Cox, but this casting decision to be “bold” does not make a lick of sense. Adam Lambert could and should have taken the role (and his flimsy excuse for not wanting to offend the trans community clearly shows no one involved with this project knows the difference between a transvestite and a transgender person).
Frank-N-Furter promptly disappears after the number, leaving us with the infamous disrobing scene as Riff and Magenta “help” Brad and Janet out of their wet clothes. Again, almost exactly as it happened in the original. And for the first time we get to hear Columbia speak. In the original, Nell Campbell treated the scene very voyeuristically with her “Slowly, slowly, it’s much too nice a job to rush” line. New Columbia Annaleigh Ashford delivers her lines with a disaffected boredom that does not bode well for the rest of the film. As Columbia drones about having already seen the Master’s laboratory and throws the wet clothing at the camera, we come to the end of the first act and the screener.
So the question is, is the film a travesty? That’s a hard question to answer being so utterly familiar with the material. Perhaps to fresh eyes, it will seem brand new and original, and one can only hope that at some point there will be an explanation about how a female Frank-N-Furter can be a transvestite (but I doubt it). People who have been watching the original movie for forty years will find little appealing about this version, save for the opening (and probably the reprise of the opening song at the end which should once again be sung by The Usherette). The first act brings nothing else new to the table, and casting Tim Curry now only seems like a desperate measure to draw those fans in. For now, we’ll await the introductions of Rocky Horror, Eddie and Dr. Scott when the rest of the film is made available to screen. And we will continue to watch with an open mind because the cast and crew are obviously very talented, but the producers (who pretty much screwed over Richard O’Brien for the original film rights way back when) are only in this for the money.
The screening version presented to the press was not a final cut so some things may be changed by the time the full version is made available.
FOX
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