Well I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show remake last night and…here are some thoughts.
The Good
Ryan McCartan felt like he was the only one who knew exactly what this production needed from a tone stand point and his performance as Brad is what kept me watching. Tim Curry and Ben Vereen were also really game.
Ivy Levan! I’m so happy she’s doing more stuff after how amazing her theme fro Spy was.
The Bad
Laverne Cox’ performance. Her singing was good but I was surprised at how surface level everything felt with her. It felt she was playing Tim Curry trying to play the character rather than playing the character. The original film is very campy but there’s an underlying level of sincerity and some bite. That’s all missing here. Laverne plays to the rafters but the show needed her to not play so high.
The show within a show. I get that a major reason why the movie maintains its popularity is due to the fact people talk at the screen during midnight showings. However, it doesn’t work here. Fox would have been better off making this a sing-a-long or a shout-a-long and put the callbacks on the screen.
The Ugly
The production itself. How do you remake something and not seem to nail down anything that made the material special in the first place? This production just looked cheap, without the camp, and I felt like I was just watching a sanitized version of the tale, even more so than the Glee version. The direction was awful and felt so removed from what the actors were doing. Where was the sleaze? The drama? The viciousness? So watered down and scrubbed clean, and boring to look at/watch.