FOX’s "The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Part 2 | The Odyssey Online
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FOX’s "The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Part 2

“Warping” the original times of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” but not much for the better.

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FOX’s "The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Part 2
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Last Week, FOX finally aired the anticipated, or feared, production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The preview and articles about it during the summer left me with certain impressions, which you can read here, but now I finally get to the performance itself.

The beginning starts with the opening credit song, “Science Fiction Double Feature.” Ivy Levan does a very good rendition of the song. She alters it just enough to fit her vocals and keeps very traditional to the original, which I appreciate. She has very good control and body language while walking in, out, and around the theater setting. Her character references the original theater productions, when a singer in risqué Rocky Horror corset would come out, walk around the theatre, and do a strip tease while singing the song. Many traditionalist critics have been angered at the fact there was no strip tease, and in general the dumbed down sex of the film, but this is cable network television. There needs to be some reason. The fact that the setting is a theatre showing FOX’s version of the “The Rocky Horror Picture Show Movie” also brings in elements of the 40th anniversary. My only concern would be how everyone in the theatre is a punk rocker or like wise. A broader range of an audience, such as older folks that watched the original production or young "virgins" of the film. Fans are more than the outwardly strange these days; in fact, I feel like more fans come under the “looking normal” category, because it’s something new.

Next, is the actual beginning of the film, which introduces Janet Weiss and Brad Majors. Ryan McCartan does an great job of being Brad Majors. There is a lot of the traditional performance in his character portrayal, but he is more expressive than the original movie actor that gives Brad Majors some new sense of the man more like today. However, while McCartan does an excellent job, Victoria Justice, as feared, simply does a copy and paste of all her other characters. She acts almost fake sweet and pure, in an attempt to capture the modern innocent woman. However, it just doesn’t sync well with Janet’s lines, and creates a breaking of the scene, which McCartan carries very well. Her singing is traditional to Susan Sarandon, and singing well, but her movements are lackluster.

This dynamic continues to the foreboding castle, where we initially meet Reeve Carney as Rif Raff and Christina Millian as Magenta. Their costumes were certainly interesting, and nothing to complain about. Magenta’s hair color was actually magenta, which I didn’t find necessary to emphasize her name. The actress couldn’t decide what accent she wanted to do, which was bothersome, but eventually I got used to it. Their acting wasn’t traditional nor original. They were minor characters who played up as minor as they could. Their singing performance of the “Time Warp” was equal to their lackluster acting. Their rendition was more sing song and focused on costume aesthetic to convey the oddness of the castle, but this environment did nothing to support the shock or surprise. The entire performance had impressive choreography but seemed too planned and coordinated, and not warped enough for the song. Even if they had to reduce the sexual nature of the entire show, they could have captured the Rocky Horror in many other ways. Note, this is the same company that produces American Horror Story.

Moving on, we finally see Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank-n-Furter. FOX continued their trend of vibrant colors rather than BDSM black and corsets by giving our female doctor a red, sparkly, drag-queen like outfit, if I may say. I’m pretty neutral on this, leaning toward negative. Did they make these appearance changes just to be different or is there a purpose? A mini background segment they showed during the live airing described they wanted the humans to carry a blue theme and the people of the castle to be red, but I sensed an original point of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is to not know the difference between who is who. Inevitably, we are all have the same desires, so why try and separate people into groups? It’s about joining as one, a community of the strange obsessions, (so goes my thoughts). Going back to the main focus, Laverne Cox has some awkward choreography to focus on her not very impressive singing. She changes the iconic song not to fit her voice, but to be just something different from the original. There is a force of focus on the wrong parts and a gloss over what is important. Even the very chilling “anticipation” line fell flat because of her choice of emphasis. Another reason to her lack luster may be her general Frank-n-Furter character. She acts like a partying, happy, cheery, and hyperactive character that doesn’t fit with the sexuality and self-embracing aspects of the song. It comes from a good perspective, but did not match well to the original script they were trying — I emphasize trying — to emulate.Her other performance of “I Can Make You a Man” goes the same as her introduction song. There was heart in her performance, that just didn’t line up well with this original script they were strictly trying to follow. These past performances are redeemed by Adam Lambert as Eddie and his rendition of “Hot Patootie.” He looked the part, put an appropriate spin on the song, and definitely let his voice sing. He was honestly the only character that looked “dirty,” sexy, and appropriate. The unfortunate part was the directing of the scene, which had been decent until this. The camera was awkward trying to follow Adam Lambert around the crowded stage, as they did in the movie, with Frank-n-Furter lacking — I emphasize lacking — behind. In my opinion, the Doctor should be infuriated that Eddie is trying to upstage her show, her greatest creation. Not to mention, there is unspoken love tension between Frank-n-Furter, Columbia, and Eddie that isn’t addressed at all — or is and very poorly. Lastly, they simply glaze over the killing of Eddie in the end; the Dr. stabs Eddie once with a knife, then Eddie conveniently falls out a window. There was no emotion in Frank-n-Furter’s murdering and no fear in Eddie’s eyes that —if I may say — was in the original movie production, in which the Dr. frantically finds a looks for a weapon, finds a pick axe in the ice cooler Eddie, which one can assume Eddie probably used to try an escape, and with a malicious smile murders Eddie in several heavy blows. A great music performance with unfortunate directing and lack of character chemistry.

There are constant call backs to the original theatre setting that attempt to bring in the audience participation aspect of “The Rocky Horror Show,” but the transitions are clunky and distract from the film a lot. I did appreciate some of the small audience participation they put in the film itself; they should have just done that to make a smoother film. Columbia is also an insert of a character. Her outlandish, cotton candy looks, make her stand out from the crowd and adhere to this production’s color coding; Columbia was a human seduced into the life of the castle. But it’s a bit too much, in comparison to everyone else who wore all black. In the Original production, she barely stood out with a yellow sequined corset, which at least matched the style of the corset trend. The recitation of lines did not blend in with the rest of the cast, and her accent was okay addition but was more distracting than anything.

FOX completely tones down the seduction scenes of Janet and Brad by Frank-n-Furter, but I give them a pass because of the cable network restrictions. Even so, the dynamics between the characters in those scenes seemed particularly off and ruined the scenes. Even Brad Majors, who I previously praised, seemed strangely detached from the situation. The victims act too fake when being seduced, when I believe they should have been more surprised and coerced. They both quickly agreed to sleep — or in FOX’s case, simply kiss and smack butts — without any proper build up, both before the bedroom scene and during. I also complain about the missing aspect of the cameras watching these events. The movie had this feature, and I felt it referenced the unspoken world of pornography in a way. It added to the sex of the scenes because it was like we were watching — and in fact, Rif Raf and Magenta were watching. Cutting certain parts are definitely okay with reproductions, but I believe features should be made up to continue to convey an even aura as seen in the original version.

They do keep the TV watching aspect for Janet and Rocky, the creation, when they play around. There are parts of this scene that work and definitely don’t, again, because of the public network restrictions. The the sex of the song “Touch-A, Touch-A Touch Me,” is emphasized by it’s bedroom location and gold colors, which match Rocky’s clothes, who is a creation of sex. Victoria Justice definitely plays the sexual-playful role much better than her fake innocent role. Again, perhaps it’s just the dialogue that doesn’t match the times that ruins her virgin Janet performance, or maybe because it’s just Justice recycling her old characters. Anyway, Justice does best when she’s free to move around, and it helps that she has a very attractive body. However, while the scene and song are blatantly sexual, the movements of her don’t match. She did her best but jumping around and rolling on a bed still seems amateurish. And if she was previously exposed to sex, we suppose, for the first time with Frank-n-Furter, wouldn’t she have higher, more dangerous tastes now? Even FOX’s replacement of blatant sex with smacking butts is pretty kinky in a way, especially if demonstrated by Frank-n-Furter. Or so it should. I have no understanding of why Columbia and Magenta reactions are jumping up and down too. They are supposedly mocking Janet's sexual encounter but I don’t believe appropriately or strangely enough to their characters.

(So, this is getting pretty long, so I’ll try to speed it up).

All these previous points about setting, character dynamics, singing, and portrayal continue for the rest of the film. During the dinner scene, everything is supposing to be tense and awkward, especially between the four in the love square. However, Cox’s happy-everything-is-okay interpretation of Frank-n-Furter doesn’t fit, and frankly doesn’t develop at all. She keeps the same character to the end, without any height in anger, sadness, or fear. I expected much more than this one emotion acting from such a diverse casting with great skill sets, which they might have relied on too much. Justice doesn’t fair well either as her own character, attempting to return to the innocent character she was failing to portray already and also not having any chemistry with the other characters. Perhaps it’s her big name that prevents her from actually being part of the peer cast, but she stands out like a sore thumb. In the scene of Frank-n-Furter chasing her around in vengeance, Justice puts up a poor show of struggling, trying to act cuter than fearful. Her reliance on her name and body, and singing to an extent, holds her back to repeat her old characters and not developing as an actress. Brad Majors, Rif-Raf, Magenta, Rocky, and Columbia just barely make it by without anything fantastic or particularly original. Dr. Scott does as best as he can and holds up to the same standards as the other characters. They made Dr. Scott an African American, to I don’t know what reference or purpose, but thankfully it doesn’t change or affect his acting to much. With such minor role, he does what he can, and isn’t too bad of a portrayal, but he also didn’t add anything spectacular. I also missed the German accent in his song.

Tim Curry does his best in his minor part of the narrating Criminologist. They gave him an assistant in the FOX film do do the physical acting, because unfortunately, Tim Curry currently resides in a wheel chair after health complications. He carries a neutral tone around him, which is typical of the scientist trying to explain something seemingly unexplainable, and it’s balanced out by his physically excited assistance. It was nice to see Tim Curry again and very sad. My hopes that were inspired by Tim Curry being involved in the film were unfortunately crushed.

The film focused more on outer appearances, names, diversity, and aesthetic than making visual choices that emphasized the plot. It definitely ruined the original purpose of the production, which was a parody-tribute to science fiction and horror B movies of the 30’s and through the early 70s. I’m glad FOX had a budget, to an extent, for the quality of the film, but they did not use it properly to capture the 40th Anniversary. The film generally met up to my expectations, if not a little less, leaving me to give the film a rating of 6.7/10.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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