Movie Review of Fame

Amy Gordon

Movie Review of “Fame”

Genre: Drama, Musical

Rating: PG

Runtime: 107 min

“Fame”, starring Kherington Payne of “So You Think You Can Dance”, Asher Book, Kay Panabaker, Walter Perez, and Naturi Naughton, is about kids who audition for a spot in the New York High School for the Performing Arts. This movie is directed by Kevin Tancharoen and released in September 2009. Debbie Allen stars in the movie as the principal of the school. She played a student in the original movie in the 80s. Kelsey Grammer played the piano teacher and Megan Mullally played the vocal teacher at the school.

This movie is based off the 1980s version of Fame. It follows four students around for their entire career at the Performing Arts School. It follows these students through their training to pursue their careers in dance, singing or acting.

The actors seemed to portray their characters well. Most of the actors in the movie are fairly new to the movie scene. They were mostly in television shows. Since this movie is a remake, they have fulfilled the expectations of their performance in the movie. It is hard to compare the characters in both movies because they are completely different.

The camera angles in the movie were very thought out. When the actors were dancing, they showed the dance from all different angles. The cameraperson knew where to be when someone was lifting a leg or doing some other move that needed to be captured on camera. The music in the movie was all the students. This helped to show the overall theme of the show, which is that, it is all about the students. There was not any piece of music in that movie that was not sung or played by a student.

The movie addressed its themes very well. The movie has a theme about determination. In this movie, the actors, or students, of the school had to show why they were picked to be in this school everyday. It showed different acting classes where the students who were there for acting would rehearse. They also had a separate scene for the musicians, dancers, and singers. Sometimes even the students were involved in multiple things. Another theme in the movie was confidence. A couple of the actors had trouble with their confidence. One of the characters in particular, played by Kay Panabaker, was an extremely shy person when she made it into the school. She had a hard time acting big and singing big. Her teachers were constantly telling her to be bigger. Also, Naturi Naughton’s character had confidence issues. She had a hard time letting people know she was a good singer because she did not want her parents to find out. Ultimately, she overcomes this fear.

This film is shot in more of a documentary style. It follows the students closely through their journey. This film is full of dance numbers, and musical performances that are amazing. The director picked the right group of actors for this movie. The dancers are very talented and show it in numerous dance performances.

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