Fame (**)

Directed by: Kevin Tancharoen
Starring: Charles S. Dutton, Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullally, Bebe Neuwirth, Debbie Allen, Kay Panabaker, Naturi Naughton, Kherington Payne, Asher Book, Collins Pennie, Walter Perez
Seen: October 16th 2009

** Out of ****

Fame does not understand economy of characters. It throws a gauntlet down that would need a TV-series to keep up with everything hinted at in the movie. We are expected to follow 10 “leading” characters, not even including the 5 teachers, who also have rather involved roles in the movie. There is no single character that you get to care about, as the possibility for this is remote as no single (short-) story line is followed up on. All the characters’ story arcs are so simple that you need to see their plight (or whatever) only about three times during the span of the movie, for about 3 minutes each time, to know exactly what they’re on about. A soap opera in other words.

The dancing and singing and acting (not the overall movie’s acting, but the small bits of acting that feature in the story) are almost always pretty damn brilliant and intense, and serve as the glue for the movie, keeping everything together, if only just. The film is basically a dull and uninvolving plot strung together by a string of good and entertaining vignettes. The parts that are not performances from pupils at the Performance Arts School are mostly just not worth the long sit to get to the in-between parts, where the performers do manage to amaze the viewer with some stunningly choreographed dancing, well performed music (piano solo’s or rap songs telling their life stories), or involving bits of acting.

The movie is divided into five parts, Audition Day, Freshman Year, Sophomore Years, Junior Years and Senior Year. These years flash by so quickly that everything just seems a blur – 10 pupils and 5 teachers’ interaction over 4 years condensed into 107 minutes of movie – enough said. The films features the usual ridiculous number where everyone “spontaneously” breaks into song and dance in the cafeteria to a performance that is impossibly involving for everyone and therefore impossible to believe as spontaneous, but quite entertaining. So that is Fame for you, the film won’t make the ones involved famous, and the ones that went into it famous show good reason why they are famous, as Kelsy Grammer (Music teacher – Piano), Megan Mullally (music Teacher – Singing) and Charles S. Dutton (Drama Teacher) effortlessly show us.

So if you’re in the mood for a low-involvement movie featuring some very good dancing and singing numbers, go see Fame, it is at least a bit better than other movies in it’s ballpark like Step Up and Step Up 2, but it’s nowhere near brilliant.