I always thought that nobody liked Drop Dead Fred. Even as a kid, when I liked everything, I knew this movie was terrible. It stars Phoebe Cates way past her pinup days, prominently features Rik Mayall, who is so obnoxious he almost ruins The Young Ones at times, and it involves some of the most childish slapstick ever put on film. It pretty much tanked at the box office, opening in sixth place (though it at least had a better per-screen average than both third-place Hudson Hawk and fourth-place Only the Lonely). Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 9%, and its IMDb rating is less than 5. Yet, as with any movie Hollywood decides to remake, people are whining. Really? At this rate, I believe that even if someone announced a remake of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 we’d see complaints about it online.

All I can say is that Universal has picked the perfect person to fill Mayall’s shoes, because Russell Brand is definitely this generation’s most annoying British comedian. What they shouldn’t do, though, is say this new version is going to be more like Beetlejuice. It’s going to be very easy for them to outdo the original DDF, and I applaud Hollywood for trying to improve on a failure for once, especially when it fits with a quote from the film (”You see when something’s not working right, the best thing to do is tear it apart to make it better.”). But there’s no sense comparing this to Tim Burton’s masterpiece. That’s absolutely the wrong way to pitch this thing.

Read what others are saying about this latest remake announcement after the jump.

…Read more

• “Some believe that with the country reeling from the economic breakdown on Wall Street, moviegoers will go for comedy,” says Variety, which predicts My Best Friend’s Girl to top the weekend over Lakeview Terrace. Of course, there’s also Ricky Gervais yukking it up in Ghost Town, but The Hollywood Reporter notes that film has tracked so poorly that Paramount cut back its screen count. I guess moviegoers won’t go for just any comedy in depressing times.
• Forget all the rumors about Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell playing Watson to Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes in Guy Ritchie’s adaptation. Jude Law is now reportedly in talks to play the detective’s associate. And so I must elementarily deduce that Sherlock Holmes will surprisingly not be a hit.
• The kid from A Christmas Story will make his directorial debut with Couples Retreat, which will star his usual collaborators Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, as well as Jason Bateman.
• Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi have been cast in a film about the beginnings of the Internet porn industry. But will any of its target audience leave the computer long enough to go see it?
• Finally, though this isn’t big news, the 3-D animated adaptation of my favorite kid’s book of all time, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, has rounded out its voice cast with James Caan, Anna Faris, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Tracy Morgan and Mr.T!. I can not wait.

• Benten Film’s latest release, the award-winning The Free Will (otherwise known as “that 3-hour German rape movie”), is available today. I’ll be posting a longish piece on the film when I get back to New York next week, but in the meantime, check out comments from Cinematical, The ScreenGrab, and Hammer to Nail.
• Fleshbot notes that the editor of Showgirls/director of last year’s Dane Cook/Jessica Alba bomb Good Luck Chuck is also a published photographer of art porn. The Approval Matrix may need to be redrawn to reflect such achievements in middlebrow sleaze.
• Speaking of dubious filmmakers: is Madonna turning into Mae West? Michael Musto is all for it, as long as we all agree to “pass a law that in 30 years she must start covering shit up.”
• New Magnet release Shrooms leads Craig Keller at Cinemasparagus to ask an immortal question: “If, in a film, a character has to have his penis bitten off within the first 35 minutes, wouldn’t it be more interesting to let him live until the story’s end?”