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Scandal of a remake
SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS
Directed by Todd Phillips
Certificate 12a
IT is a simple task to look at a remake of an old and trusted favourite and then slam it for defaming the spirit of the original.
When looking at recent Hollywood attempts to recapture the magic of British comedies – The Ladykillers, with Tom Hanks springs to mind – it is a wonder why studios simply don’t steal the films plot and call it something else entirely.
The comic characters are what makes the original School For Scoundrels work: the put-upon Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael), bounder Raymond (Terry-Thomas) and unscrupulous teacher Mr Potter (Alistair Sim), produce memorable banter, a trick this remake fails to recreate.
Billy Bob Thornton is the scoundrel Dr P whose runs a very neo-con Self-Help school, while John Heder, who made a name for himself by playing loser Napoleon Dynamite, is Roger, the traffic warden nerd in love with his neighbour Amanda (Jacinda Barrett). But he is far too meek and vulnerable to have any chance with such an apparently raging beauty.
Rog decides to cough up $5,000 to enrol in a secret class where he can learn the tricks of knocking the fairer sex dead – but Dr P, whose advice runs along the lines of the bigger the lie, the better, decides he wants Amanda all for himself, the race is on.
Relying heavily on conventional slap-stick, the characters have little to do but fall over themselves. Add this to the fact its players lack the heights of Terry-Thomas‚s wonderful ability of raising laughs just by opening his mouth and arching his eyebrows, it seems a shame that it has the same title of such a classic, when it clearly isn’t. |
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