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.

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