Sign of the Times?

When it comes to movies and television, I'm not that difficult a person to please. I'm admittedly and avid watcher of The Suite Life on the Disney Channel (London Tipton is one of my all time favorite characters), and my favorite movies include Center Stage and Spice World. So when I received the 2009 remake of Fame from Netflix, I was expecting to enjoy it.

I turned it off before it was even over. I hardly ever do that. My innate curiosity almost always causes me to want to see what happens, even if I'm not that into a movie. And hello, a movie about a performing arts high school is sure to be right up my alley! Instead, I opted to turn it off because I was more interested in continuing reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone...which I have read at least five times already.

But Fame was so boring I didn't even care. The dancing was lackluster and the need to turn every performing art movie into some sort of hip hop these days was such a huge turnoff. Step Up was fine, Step Up 2 Tha Streetzzz not so much. Maybe I like classical dance. Maybe I appreciate Shakespeare. Why does "modernizing" a movie mean Shakespeare performed as a rap or ballet performed to hip hop music? (Save the Last Dance is probably the only other dance movie that I hated for that reason) Is this something I have to accept as a sign of the times? I'm truly starting to believe I was born in the wrong generation. Everything seems to be dumbed down in order to get the youth of today to watch it. Maybe they're just all too busy "twittering" about their inane lives to pay attention to a movie with any character development or dialogue that requires a full attention span.

Sigh. I'm going to go put Fame back in the mail and just pretend it never happened. Next on the list: Secret Diary of a Call Girl, disc 2. See? I told you I'm not hard to please.