The Watered Down Rocky Horror Picture Show

Fox seems to have a history of taking something great and transforming it….into something not so great.

In my opinion their latest disaster was “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again.” There was a magic to the 1975 film that cannot be replicated.

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Laverne Fox, a well-noted transvestite, took over the role originally filled by Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.” This Frank-N-Furter was missing everything. The scene entry was flat and Laverne Fox just didn’t have the same energy or shock factor as Curry.

It was nice to see the original star Tim Curry playing the narrator, despite having suffered a stroke in 2012.

Ryan McCartan and Victoria Justice played Brad and Janet, but essentially it just felt to me like they were just reciting lines, not playing a role. They were acceptable as the newlywed virgins, but still seemed stiff, even after the characters had lost their prudishness.
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Reeve Carney (Dorian Gray of Penny Dreadful) as Riff-Raff is one of the saving factors of this film. Essentially he recreated the role originally by Richard O’Brien and carried it off with his added touches.

He may not be Meatloaf, but Adam Lambert obviously had fun in the role of delivery boy Eddie. Fun was the heart of the film…I think that is the biggest fact that dragged the whole play down…you just didn’t get that sense of ‘fun’ that the original film actors had. It didn’t even have the same energy as the stage plays I have seen.

They took a magical classic and remade it in their own watered down version. The show tempo was slower, the cast didn’t seem to be having fun with it, and frequent cuts to the audience just added to the disjointed feeling that the whole movie gave me. Imitation may be considered the sincerest form of flattery, but in this case all it did was make us want to boot up the original so we could see how it should have been done.

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