So someone at MGM must have seen the success of the “High School Musical” films and thought, “Hey! We own the rights to ‘Fame’ — the original high school musical! We should PG-ify it and remake it for the modern generation!” And that’s what they did, and it blows.
“Surrogates,” on the other hand, does not blow, even though they didn’t screen it for critics until Thursday night (which is usually a bad sign). It’s a pretty swift sci-fi action flick set in a world where people stay home and send robot surrogates outside in their place, thus experiencing life without risk of pain or injury. Bruce Willis plays an FBI agent investigating the deaths of people who were killed when their surrogates got killed — which ain’t supposed to happen, you know. That’s the whole point. The film isn’t brilliant or anything, but it’s surprisingly solid. Review to come at Film.com.
“Pandorum,” a sci-fi horror film about two astronauts who wake up with no memory of who they are or what their mission is, is one of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets. I believe it was screened last night, but critics weren’t notified or invited. I don’t know if I’ll get around to reviewing it or not. I still want to catch “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” from last week, which I keep hearing is really funny.
“Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” one of the most notorious disasters from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, opens today in limited release. Don’t bother looking for it.
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