2003-12-07 
 

scary sequel


As you may've heard - if you're a pop culture junky like myself - 32 Candles is due to come out next October. A sequel to one of my all time faves, 16 Candles, I have some very mixed feelings.

First and foremost, it's made for TV which is a format sure to ruin almost anything. Ever watch one of those made for TV movies when they finally come out on DVD? There's often a sudden revelation/calamity scene followed by a not so smooth cut which leads to five seconds earlier in the same sudden revelation/calamity scene. It's like a record skipping. Alternatively, the same not so smooth cut can also lead into a recap of the previous 15 minutes of script. That's a bit like a CD skipping. Both of these skips are due to the television producer/editor deciding that the public is too stupid to remember what was just happening before they ran to the kitchen for some pretzels and another beer.

On the other hand, both Molly Ringwald and A.M. Hall have both supposedly signed on to the project. That should make viewing this potential disaster almost worthwhile. (Barring death, there's no good reason to have someone else playing an original cast member in a sequel. Write them out or don't write the sequel.)

Nobody else has signed on. I'll be very sad if Michael Schoeffling doesn't come out of retirement for this one. I'm not sure I could take a sequel without Jake. "Jake!" <--- from under a glass table top

(SPOILER ALERT) Preliminary info on plot tells of a potential romance between Sam and Farmer Ted as Sam gets over what could've been with Jake. (In this scenario, she followed him to college but something went wrong along the way or something didn't quite work out, because that's the way things happen in real life. Did I mention that Ted's an internet multimillionaire? Natch. That's actually pretty real life too.)

And there's the rub. 16 Candles, as well as it managed to echo the real world, was not real life. It was a modern fairy tale that gave everybody the right to hope for something better. And when fairy tales say happily ever after, they ought to mean it.

My own preference for a plot, would have Sam and Jake experiencing some crisis in their new parenthood, which most of my generation would appreciate. Meanwhile, in a major subplot, Ted -who did make a bundle on the internet- finds his princess. Or prince.

Oh ok, as gay as I am, that wouldn't seem right...although, the only thing that would make Sam and Jake not being together a permissible plot, would be if he had come out of the closet in college. Yum! I'd buy that wholesale! (why am I suddenly inspired to create some fanfic? probably the chance to write the script myself before someone else has the chance to ruin it.)

Anyway. Whatever happens, I'll be sitting there glued to the tube with most folks of my generation for whom the original is now a classic. We'll all be expecting to be completely horrified, but somewhere deep inside of each of us there'll be a teenager who's hoping that sometimes fairy tales can still come true.

Labels: dose of mikey, random review

* posted by me at 2:23 AM

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