Kevin Hart has made a name for himself in comedy. After getting his big break in the series, Undeclared, Hart went on to star in films such as Ride Along, The Wedding Singer, and both Think Like a Man movies. He also created and starred in the series, Real Husbands of Hollywood.
Though one of his future films doesn’t seem like a good fit for him. The movie is “Untouchable”, an American remake of the French film “The Intouchables”. The Intouchables is about a quadriplegic man that hires a man recently released from prison to be his nurse.
Although this film is made to be a comedy-drama it seems that a remake might not be as good as the original. That’s problem with movie remakes; they don’t always work. One major example is the Spiderman movie’s.
First there were the three movies starring Toby McGuire. One of the major comments people made about this movie was that Toby McGuire looked like a grown man… but that was the point. In the last two films of that series Peter Parker was in college and in the last film he had a full-time job.
Then came The Amazing Spiderman, in which the actor to play Peter Parker, was younger, and kept the character in high school. Now in the latest Spiderman series Peter Parker is a freshman in high school. The moral of this being that some remakes should just be left on the cutting room floor, where they belong.
Kevin Hart’s remake of the movie, The Intouchables, is something that could be left on the cutting room floor, but some films have drastic differences. Though foreign films can often seem strange sometimes giving them a chance is something we have to do.
There is a quote from the 1990’s animated comedy show, The Critic, that is apt in describing remakes of movies. The quote is, “If it's a remake of a classic, rent the classic”. While remakes are often not terrible they can be good for the sake of picking up a new issue that some people don’t understand.
For this I’m going to switch from films to television because the comparison makes more sense. The Netflix sitcom, One Day at a Time, is a remake of the original series which was broadcast from, 1975-1984 on CBS. The Netflix remake focuses on the lives of a Cuban-American family and the way that they assimilate into American culture.
The show still has the same elements of the original series, grandmother helping her divorced daughter raise two kids, along with some help from a friend. This series has been praised for its portrayal of many aspects of Cuban culture and takes on women in America.
While for some the classic series may seem better than this one it is still something that many people should experience. Though Kevin Hart’s remake of the movie has yet to be released it could be a great triumph or massive bomb. Remakes tend to be that way.
Remakes of movies don’t have much leeway in terms of whether or not they’re a success or a failure. The gray area is what makes remakes of movies so enticing. People find that the unknown is the something left to be desired.
In the case of Remakes v. Classics; the jury is still out, but the remake of The Intouchables, titled Untouchable, could just be the movie to bring in the verdict.
