Hollywood’s desperate need to remake anything from the 80s that made money is apparent here in the remake of a hit film that patently didn’t need a remake.

Fame is set in the New York Performing Arts Academy and follows a group of aspiring teens who want to be performers through four years of high school during which they never seem to age or noticeably improve. An ensemble cast of talented newcomers make up the cast of kids, while some very familiar faces, such as Megan Mullally (Will & Grace),  Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Nuewirth (Frasier), fill out the minor roles as the teachers.

The film belongs to the youngsters, however, and a talented bunch they are, particularly Naturi Naughton as Denise Dupree, the classical pianist with a talent for Hip Hop. Remember that name. You will be seeing more of this girl.

The film follows the plot of the original, sort of, updated for the noughties with the addition of some rap and hip-hop that wasn’t even thought of in the original. But the film follows ten different characters, and the years slip by so quickly, were it not for the “Freshman Year”, “Sophomore Year” etc, screens that pop up annoyingly every 25 minutes or so to give you a heads up, you’d think the whole film happened over the space of a couple of months.

There is little or no character development, and the characters we do get are cliché and well, pretty boring, actually. This is made worse by the fact that at graduation, (assuming you’ve worked out who's who) you have no idea what the future holds for any of them, except the kid from Ohio who’s heading back home to take over his mother’s ballet school, because his teacher has assured him, he can’t cut it as a pro.

The worse crime of this remake though, is it’s inevitability. By the end of the auditions at the start of the film, you know who’s going to do well, who’s going to rebel, who’s going to make it, who's going to have an epiphany, who isn’t… In the end, you’re watching it for the individual set pieces, which are well-enough done, but the coherence of the plot leaves you wondering about... the coherence of the plot.

I have seen the original film and the stage play of this musical and I have to say, I can’t see this remake has added anything to the mix. Which is more than the director of the original movie had to say about it. Sir Alan Parker said, in a recent interview, that "producing an inferior remake of Fame insults the memory of those involved with the original." Ouch.

On the plus side thats the first time I've seen the word 'noughties'.

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