What would you say to having another Statue of Liberty erected in New York harbor–a complete remake of the other, only the woman would look like Barbra Streisand, she’d be holding a pink flamingo instead of a torch, and her headdress would spell out “America” in flashing yellow and puce colored lights?
Imagine that, and you’ll have an approximate notion of how I feel having just come from screening the new Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, Greg Kinnear movie “Sabrina,” whose credits proclaim: “A film based on a film by Billy Wilder.”
As in, “A painting based on a painting by Michaelangelo.”
Or more accurately, “A comic book based on . . . “
True, Hollywood has disgraced itself this way before. Not content with Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s original “Three Musketeers,” Hollywood went on to make six others, including one starring Don Ameche, Binnie Barnes and the Ritz Brothers.
There must be 50 million copies of the epic Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh original of “Gone With the Wind” available in video stores (even in Flin Flon, Manitoba video stores), but still some mogul deemed it worthwhile to redo that classic with Val Kilmer’s little known mousy ex-wife as Scarlett.
But now they have really lost their minds.
The film this “Sabrina” is based on was a stylish, sophisticated, endearingly romantic comedy also called “Sabrina” and starring the incomparable, inimitable, irreplaceable and certainly unremakable Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden.
Hepburn, made in heaven for the part, was the ugly-duckling daughter of an upper class North Shore Long Island family’s chauffeur, with an enormous crush on the family’s irresistible and totally irresponsible playboy youngest son (Holden). After a year at a Paris cooking school (to learn to be a kitchen servant), she returned transformed into a beautiful swan and super sophisticate.
Not recognizing her at first, but then realizing she’s far superior to all the girls at the Harvard prom laid end to end (if I may borrow from Dorothy Parker), playboy Holden falls for her madly, but so does his stuffy, hard-as-nails, captain of industry older brother (Bogart), and she must choose between them.
Directed by the equally incomparable, etc., Billy Wilder, this movie was utterly flawless–a gem of its time to be admired (and watched) for generations.
Instead, they’ve done this remake.
Are you a Harrison Ford fan? You will weep to see how. in trying to transform Ford into a worldly Bogart playing a ruthless WASP tycoon, they have made him a twerp.
Julia Ormond has done well in her native England playing a fetching Catherine the Great in “Young Catherine.” She bared her breasts and died of the black plague with equal flair in “Nostradamus.” But Audrey Hepburn? She’d have a hard time playing Audrey’s shoe.
For some reason, Hollywood has been spending millions trying to make Ormond into a Big Star. Yet the result has been “Legends of the Fall,” in which she was upstaged by Brad Pitt in the beauty department; and “First Knight,” in which she was out-acted by, gads, Richard Gere.
I think I could be a Greg Kinnear fan if I could ever stay up late enough to catch his middle-of-the-night talk show. But Bill Holden? If they wanted someone with Holden’s brash, bad boy glamor, why not Brad Pitt? Or Mel Gibson?
They made a mockery of all the best scenes. And the plot lines has been trampled to death. Instead of going to cooking school, the mousy, frumpy chauffeur’s daughter lands a job as an assistant at Paris Vogue.
If they felt they must remake Sabrina, they should have hired Whit Stillman.
In a Whit Stillman “Sabrina,” the blue blood playboy would discover the beautiful girl just back from Paris was in fact the chauffeur’s daughter, and then drop her on the spot, sparing us all the rest.
