Fame (2009)

I’m too young to remember much before, say, 1986. I don’t say this to make anyone else feel old but to underscore the fact that the memories I do have — of a hard-scrabble life with my single teenage mother in New York City, at a time where danger seemed to be just around every corner — are pretty strong ones. I know, not from memory but from history lessons I got from movies that range from “Summer of Sam” to the original “Taking of Pelham 123″ that the mind-expanding, good-times drugs of the 1970s had morphed into a serious problem with crack, that the City was emerging from a dire fiscal crisis and that it was losing its fight with crime, white flight, and urban blight.

That’s all to say that life as a New Yorker was no walk in Central Park in 1980, when Alan Parker’s “Fame” hit the big screen. So the elation felt when watching a group of kids with idomitable high hopes flap-ball-change, pas de chat, and practice their coloratura was no doubt informed by this bleak backdrop. If this fall’s remake of “Fame” is to be believed, today’s world looks a lot like a ride at a kiddie theme park.

It returns to the Laguardia High School of Performing Arts, where we first meet a new batch of fame seekers auditioning their little hearts out. Of the thousands that we are told put their talents to the test, the focus narrows to the ensemble that the film follows through their four years. There’s Jenny (Kay Panabaker), the would-be ingenue if she could only get over her fears; Victor (Walter Perez), the Latino musician/DJ/producer; Marco (Asher Book), the good-looking future John Mayer; Malik (Collins Pennie), the angry black man actor/rapper; Kevin (Paul McGill), the gay Midwestern ballet dancer; Neil (Paul Iacono), the Brooklyn, funnyman director-type; Joy (Anna Maria Perez de Tagle), the cute, always-a-bridesmaid-never-a-leading-lady actress; Alice (Kherrington Payne), the rich white girl prima ballerina; and Denise (Naturi Naughton), the gifted concert pianist who really wants to be Lauryn Hill.

While the characters are vaguely familiar, the story — such as it is — has been updated for the “High School Musical” generation. Which is to say that all of the original film’s grit (complete with teenage pregnancy, coming out of the closet, and palpable racial and class tensions) have been expunged. They’ve been replaced with the tales of the most boring, least-rebellious teens to grace the screen since “Dawson’s creek.”

You would think that the current economic climate or the country’s growing problem with crystal meth addiction would make an appearance in this version of the film. Doesn’t anyone have an unemployed, disgraced investment banker dad? There are still ghettos and projects in this city, are there not? A career in the arts is still a risky proposition, isn’t it?

Apparently, not at Disneyland High.

Nothing — not even such cliches as a dead father or overbearing stage mother — lies beneath Jenny’s lack of confidence. She’s just the child of divorce, who is too tightly wound to be free, but not so tightly wound as to be interesting. Malik is pissed off for being pissed off’s sake, and apparently, Kevin came out in search of a fag-hag (that would be Joy) at birth. Even the film’s languid attempts to tackle the perils of being a teenage arts prodigy — an attempted suicide off the subway platform and a relationship between the white girl and (gasp) the Latino — are tied up neatly, undramatically, and wholly illogically.

Thank heavens for the well-choreographed impromptu lunchroom and Halloween party song-and-dance sequences. These are the only moments when the movie and cast take flight. These kids are undoubtedly talented and the toe-tapping scenes are the only ones that do them any justice. The rest of the time, the film’s elder statesmen, kind-eyed Kelsey Grammer, buoyant Megan Mullally, gorgeous Bebe Neuwirth, earnest Charles S. Dutton, and Debbie Allen (too briefly seen) unwittingly upstage the hell out of the youngsters.

Even the soundtrack had me looking back wistfully at a time I can just barely remember. As with the movie itself, any true grit and resulting sense of triumph has been drained from the score. Irene Cara’s Academy Award-winning theme song doesn’t actually appear in the film. When a version of it does (in the credits), the hip-hop infused revamp is a piece of overproduced garbage.

In the nearly 30 years since the original “Fame,” there have been no shortage of movies featuring talented teens singing and dancing through their high school’s halls. And history has shown that even the real losers in the bunch (I’m looking at you, “Save the Last Dance”) can make a buck. Still, that’s no excuse for resurrecting a winner like “Fame” to turn it into this derivative, uninspired piece of movie-making.