Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Freddy Kreuger: World's Worst Gardener

I am not one of those anti-remake people. Some of my best friends are remakes and I took a class in college on Remake-American studies. But do we really need to be retold the story of the most famous haunted kid-touching gardener in history? Okay, to be fair the only two other movies about gardeners I can think of are “Being There” and “The Constant Gardener”; the former featuring a simple-minded but tender Peter Sellers who teaches people to love again and the latter featuring Ralph Fiennes, who simply didn’t have time for pedophilia what with his constant gardening.

Remaking “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is like remaking “Schindler’s List” (which, I believe, is slated for a 2012 release, directed by McG, starring Tyrese Gibson, and I think the phrase “Tokyo drift” is now somewhere in the title). Everyone knows about Freddy Krueger and there nothing all that new you can do with the story. Freddy did some kid diddling at a preschool, the parents of the aforementioned diddled kids burn Freddy alive, and Freddy sues the parents in order to pay for his skin-graft surgery. No wait…he seeks revenge for the loss of his precious subcutaneous tissue by killing the now sexy teen versions of his diddle victims with his Wolverine claws in their dreams. So overall a pretty standard plot…By the way, why is a child molester the only one who is granted the powers if a dream warrior? Him and Dennis Quaid. The only logical conclusion one can draw from that is that Dennis Quaid is also a disfigured sexual deviant ghost.


(Improper gardening equipment)

But aside from that I take no issue with the film’s plot. God knows I would do the same thing in Freddy’s position, though instead of claws I’d probably use a light saber or those shoulder-mounted rockets from “Predator”, or a shoulder-mounted light saber launcher. I mean, if it’s a dream I might as well go hog-wild. My issue is with the fact that zero effort went into this movie. When I go to see a remake of a movie made in the eighties I don’t want to see the same exact movie minus the feathered hair and synthesizer soundtrack. The director, Samuel Bayer, essentially did this, which I find very presumptuous or, as we say in the film business, Gus Van Sant-ian. If you’re not going to offer anything new at least throw in some old staples like boobs and gore.

You know what? I’m just going to go ahead and make a movie called “Boobs and Gore.” No, actually, that title doesn’t have enough zazz for today’s kids what with their Twitters and Mac computers and tiny cell phones in their ears that make me think the androids have finally taken over. I’ll need to spice it up and call it “Boobs and Gore: Return to the Isle of Brassiere.” Get Michael Bay on the phone!


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