To follow up on "My 2009 Online DVD Rentals Continued" post, I've made it through the Judy Holliday titles, starting with her Oscar winning performance in Born Yesterday (1950) at my parents' house over a month ago. It Should Happen to You (1954, with Jack Lemmon) was my favorite, even if her thick New York accent didn't make sense for the story. To hear her do other accents, you can watch her film adaptation of Broadway's Bells Are Ringing (1960). Unlike my last "Original Versus Remake" post, where I would've watched The Women (2008) with or without seeing the original, Born Yesterday (1993) is only interesting as a contrast to the original, and even then it's not that interesting. The bottom line is that subtlety = believability. I just couldn't buy John Goodman as a bad guy, no matter how much he yelled (I will admit it worked better for the Coen Brothers). But Don Johnson as a clean cut brainiac? Were they intentionally playing all the actors against type? While Melanie Griffith gets the accent of Judy Holliday, she talks WAY too slow for a city girl and her makeup changes more than her mental prowess over the course of the movie. The two musical montages, unique to the remake, tacked on what seemed like a half hour. If you couldn't tell, I hate musical montages. But the main difference is that Judy Holliday always played characters with street smarts who were only dumb when it came to books (yet the actress had an IQ of 172) and Melanie Griffith's version neither starts off nor leaves us with any wisdom. Born Yesterday (1950) is a dramatic character study where everyone's outside of their element. Born Yesterday (1993) is an unfunny, fish-out-of-water comedy with jarring scenes of seriousness and violence. Come to think of it, another Judy Holliday movie, The Marrying Kind (1952), had inconsistent comedic highs with tragic lows. I was shocked to learn that Judy passed away only five years after her last big screen performance, at the age of 43. If not for that, I would probably still be catching up on all her movies right now.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Original Versus Remake, Part II
To follow up on "My 2009 Online DVD Rentals Continued" post, I've made it through the Judy Holliday titles, starting with her Oscar winning performance in Born Yesterday (1950) at my parents' house over a month ago. It Should Happen to You (1954, with Jack Lemmon) was my favorite, even if her thick New York accent didn't make sense for the story. To hear her do other accents, you can watch her film adaptation of Broadway's Bells Are Ringing (1960). Unlike my last "Original Versus Remake" post, where I would've watched The Women (2008) with or without seeing the original, Born Yesterday (1993) is only interesting as a contrast to the original, and even then it's not that interesting. The bottom line is that subtlety = believability. I just couldn't buy John Goodman as a bad guy, no matter how much he yelled (I will admit it worked better for the Coen Brothers). But Don Johnson as a clean cut brainiac? Were they intentionally playing all the actors against type? While Melanie Griffith gets the accent of Judy Holliday, she talks WAY too slow for a city girl and her makeup changes more than her mental prowess over the course of the movie. The two musical montages, unique to the remake, tacked on what seemed like a half hour. If you couldn't tell, I hate musical montages. But the main difference is that Judy Holliday always played characters with street smarts who were only dumb when it came to books (yet the actress had an IQ of 172) and Melanie Griffith's version neither starts off nor leaves us with any wisdom. Born Yesterday (1950) is a dramatic character study where everyone's outside of their element. Born Yesterday (1993) is an unfunny, fish-out-of-water comedy with jarring scenes of seriousness and violence. Come to think of it, another Judy Holliday movie, The Marrying Kind (1952), had inconsistent comedic highs with tragic lows. I was shocked to learn that Judy passed away only five years after her last big screen performance, at the age of 43. If not for that, I would probably still be catching up on all her movies right now.
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