George Twigg investigates the latest contribution to the musical-on-film genre

It would not be entirely wrong to argue that musicals have never been more popular.  They dominate the theatrical listings in London, and the BBC is forever launching a new search to find the newest stage singing sensation.  Even the adverts are getting in on the fun; a current cinema commercial shows an irritatingly upbeat man singing a song about “positive thinking” in a recession-hit town, and somehow not getting punched in the face.  The highest-grossing film of all time in UK cinemas is 2008’s Mamma Mia!  It would seem that the new remake of Fame has come along at an opportune moment, and I can state categorically that I have never seen such a plenitude of performing arts talent in one feature.  In the opening montage, violinists jostle with beatboxers for attention, and pianists, actors and dancers mingle in the mass of hopeful auditionees for the fictional New York Performing Arts High School.  The singing is particularly impressive, with Naturi Naughton as Denise standing out with her soulful tones.

But let’s be honest, the quality of the singing in a musical has minimal bearing on its overall quality.  After all, the all-conquering Mamma Mia! featured a turn from Pierce Brosnan that confirmed that he is a man utterly without ego; no prima donna would have permitted themselves to sing that badly on screen.  What is more important is the plotting, characterisation, and imagery, and in this respect musicals are no different from any other film genre.  Unfortunately, it is here where Fame falls flat; the opening image of flickering lightbulbs comes to represent a picture that never comes to life.

The basic premise of Fame was no doubt compelling the first time round in the 80s, but for a generation brought up on The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, there is nothing new in the spectacle of the tribulations of a phalanx of talented would-be stars, and the new film hardly does anything to add to typical perceptions of the performing arts industry.  We’ve seen the highs and the lows numerous times; Fame follows the tried and tested pattern of potential followed by achievement followed by doubt followed by triumph.

But even working within the confines of this hackneyed structure, Fame manages to get things wrong.  The flow of time is more rapid than Usain Bolt; four years at school pass by in less than two hours, and the film becomes constrained by this.  It feels like the various storylines are not coming to their various conclusions organically, rather because the four years are nearly up, and everything needs to be resolved by then; it’s similar to the Harry Potter series, where the most momentous events never occur in the middle of Spring Term.  The love story between the singers Jenny (Kay Panabaker) and Marco (Asher Book) is typical of this; its gestation, realisation, disintegration and resolution are spread evenly across the star-crossed couple’s schooldays, and, what is worse, it is telegraphed even before Freshman Year begins, which adds to its latent predictability.  Director Kevin Tancharoen even finds time for the usual clichéd close-up kiss.  The main flaw in the plot is its multiform nature; it follows a number of characters, studying a number of disciplines, and as such, no single protagonist has enough screen time to engage the audience.

Complementing Fame’s lack of focus are its utterly trivial dramatic events.  It’s like the ubiquitous High School Musical; all the kids are happy, talented, and don’t appear to live in the real world.  They have been given an opportunity most people would kill to possess, but spend an irritating amount of time kvetching about the pressures of being so damned amazing; the worst thing that happens to any of them is that they are stymied artistically.  While I suppose I should commend them for not going down the Big Brother route to fame, the lack of perspective, both on the parts of the dramatis personae and the movie itself, preclude the possibility of the audience’s empathy taking root with characters combining precocity, vacuity and self-pity.  Escapism is no defence; anyone who thinks that musicals are all about release from reality has obviously never seen the start of Les Mis.  It’s impossible to engage with people whose world is so hermetic.

Not only are the characters self-absorbed, but they are insufficiently drawn (though admittedly this is the fault of the writers, not the fictional people).  All stereotypes are present and correct; the jock, the shy one, the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, the kid with the pushy parents, the kid with the disapproving parents, the one who’s not actually that talented.  Character development is virtually non-existent, and if a protagonist can’t be summed by a simple personality type, then they are defined by their talent; even the setback in the love story is caused by the perils of realising potential.  The kids’ skills develop, which is admirable, but they themselves don’t, which is dramatically unsatisfying.  This isn’t helped by the fact that most of the performances by the young actors aren’t strong enough to render their screen roles as sufficiently vivid.  The adult actors (most notably Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer) are better, but their characters are only the people imparting knowledge, and don’t even merit an attempt at development.  Again, it comes down to lack of focus.

The movie’s songs initially suffer from the same problem; for example, the opening number is spliced with footage from those students engaging in art forms besides music.  A musical revolving purely around singers might have been interesting (indeed, Fame is the only musical I’ve seen in which characters refer back to songs after they’ve finished).  However, this is not the case, and because of the presence of actors, pianist and the odd tuba player, the film is very light on the musical numbers.  What there is is somewhat unimpressive.  A song taking place in the school cafeteria is a case in point; it starts pleasingly organically as an impromptu jam featuring all sorts of performers, but then degenerates into an orgy of showing off, with performers playing guitar solos, break-dancing and busting rhymes, all at the same time.  Put simply, it’s a mess, and I was pleased to see Denise and Malik, the characters I sympathised with the most, stay well out of it.  Other songs, while performed with gusto, make no imprint on the memory; at least Mamma Mia!, despite its fatuous has the memorable ABBA songs. 

However, towards the end of the film, things improve.  The penultimate song, featuring Denise and Malik, is an incredibly catchy soul tune, and the climax of the film boasts impressive cinematography (as, in fact, does the rest of the movie) and some nice musical arrangements, although it suffers from the return of the initial incongruous artistic elements; rap, gospel, dance and soul are all there, although admirably it doesn’t detract from the song’s effect.

Other silver linings include the character of Kevin (Paul McGill), who, because he isn’t perfect at what he does, at least arouses sympathy, and a scene in which the kids go out for karaoke and start acting like normal people is charming.  Although the film is largely humourless, Neil (Paul Iacono) provides some relief from the constant po-faced ambition, as is a genuinely hilarious sequence involving a hopeful trying to do the “you talkin’ to me?” scene from Taxi Driver, but ending up sounding like Joey from Friends.  However, the characters don’t heed their own headteacher’s advice to be “spontaneous, original and maybe a little outrageous” – the genre of the aspirational talent show has been done to death in recent years, and the film dragged a lot because I didn’t feel like I was being shown much that wasn’t stereotyped or badly executed.  The round of applause that the fictional audience affords the last song is cut short by the credits.  How very apt.