Don’t Even Try

Quick, think of the most preposterous choice for a new movie project that could ever come out of Hollywood or anywhere else. This may be harder than you think, considering some of the recent choices. It’s not just that we’ve had movies based on board games (Battleship) and Disneyland rides (Haunted Mansion), it’s that some of those have actually been good (Clue) or at least commercially successful (Pirates of the Caribbean I, II and III). We can assume that anything that ever made money will be remade, but that’s hardly surprising after remakes like the Total Recall remake and the upcoming remake of Top Gun, not to mention the inevitable Godzilla and Dawn of the Dead remakes. Given the appearance of the “Brony” community (look it up) I can’t even say that a rumored My Little Pony live-action blockbuster is all that amazing. But until it is given to me to see an actual press release for a Candyland live-action adventure, I have to go with the upcoming It’s a Small World movie as taking the prize…

You can check out the original story on the Los Angeles Times site if you’d like, but unless someone is pranking the Times (and us, one assumes) there is a project in development to make a live-action movie about a Disney ride in which you travel through an air-conditioned building while dolls in “traditional” costume from around the world sing an endlessly recursive tune. It isn’t clear if there’s a script yet, but a director has been hired to helm the project – it’s Jon Turteltaub, the man responsible for the National Treasure movies. How exactly you go from action/adventure movies featuring Nicholas Cage and lots of explosions to hanging a story around something Walt Disney specifically designed for little girls is not explained – and may be inexplicable – but that’s what appears to be happening…

Now, I will be the first to admit that I’ve never written or directed a successful screenplay of any kind. The people I know who have done so will tell you that it’s even harder than it looks, and the quality of the production, the acting and the story actually have nothing to do with either the critical or the commercial success of the film. Sadly, it’s not only possible for an artist to spend the best years of his or her life crafting a cinematic masterpiece only to see it ignored by the public and criticized by various hack reviewers, this happens more than it doesn’t. After a while, the urge to go directly after projects that already have a popular following – either because they are sequels to an already successful movie or because their about something else that already has fans has to become overpowering. And given that the original version of Small World in Anaheim has had roughly 290,000,000 visitors (that’s 111,000 a week for over 50 years) it seems probable that there are people who already love the concept…

If you’ve been to the movies in recent years, or watched anything reported about motion pictures, or even spent time around people who care about the state of modern cinema, you’ve probably heard the rant about how Hollywood needs to start making better movies if they want people to start going to movie theaters again. And to some extent this is absolutely true – but it is also true that the studios keep making the same repackaged crap over and over again because that is what people will pay to see. If you personally want to do something about the state of motion picture entertainment, then go see an art film, a smart biopic, a period piece or a clever original thriller, while you still can! You can always catch the Candyland movie later, if you need something to complain about…