We are the best/So screw the rest
The song used to go "At Trinian's, St Trinian's will never die."
Oh, it just has.
OK, I admit, if I'd not seen the original I'd have probably praised Rupert Everett's new slaughtering of an old classic a mildly passable way of whiling away a cold December afternoon. As it is, I found myself chewing away at the top of my popcorn container in a mixture of upset and general disbelief. Here are the problems:
1.) The original was good.
2.) In the original Alistair Sim looked like a woman, and not a man dressed as Camilla Parker-Bowles
3.) The original had Joyce Grenfell in it.
4.) Rupert Everett tried (though I feel he failed) to make the new film "shocking", since apparently the original was "shocking". (Bollocks.)
5.) The original was good.
The plot was lifted almost wholesale from the original: the school is broke and the Ministry for Education (or the DfES, as it now isn't) wants to close it down. Much hilarity ensues, mainly focussing on the fact that 12 or so years ago Colin Firth made a rather nice Mr Darcy (at one point the girls chuck him in the pond and he emerges looking a little windswept with that nice white shirt clinging to him. Phwoar, etc. If I was the BBC I'd sue for copywright.) Sensibly, though, they did not try to replicate the original entirely. They left the Joyce Grenfell character out of it altogether, and substituted George Cole with Russell Brand, which I reluctantly admit worked rather well, possibly because they rewrote him as a general lech who was clearly the worse for wear on one illegal substance or six, so Russell wasn't required to do much acting. Adding Jodie Whittaker and Stephen Fry to the cast was also clever since they're, well, good. On a purely personal note, I also experienced a certain amount of sadistic delight watching pupils of Cheltenham Ladies College getting the crap kicked out of them - I was at school with people like that, and they deserve everything they get, even if it's only fictional.
I laughed out loud only once in the whole thing, and this is perhaps because I have a twisted sense of humour rather than anything to do with the quality of the writing, as I laughed at the newspaper headline "Minister Kills Dog".
I feel, though, that the writers somehow misinterpreted the original. At the start new girl (stuck up little cow though she might be) is left to scramble around covered in soap after her delightful fellow pupils nick her clothes and turn her shower off, then put the results on YouTube. Thisisn't especially funny, it's just bullying. And as for the song "We are the best/so screw the rest"? That doesn't sound a very St T sentiment (as I doubt they would care either way), but it would be a rather accurate theme song for pretty much any of the public schools I've come across over the years, and that defeats the object, don't you think? The Emos were a nice touch (not sure about the chavs) and the Paris Hilton-esque bimbos to be expected (they ring true from my sixth form, too) but a bit more schemeing would have been nice. Gemma Arteton was fabulous, and Lily Cole surprisingly convincing as a twelve-year-old, but Miss Fritton actually comes across as disappointingly dislikable, and Colin Firth is just...well... Colin Firth, really.
Oh, and finally, the Guardian didn't like it, and I couldn't possibly disagree with the Guardian, could I?
Oh, it just has.
OK, I admit, if I'd not seen the original I'd have probably praised Rupert Everett's new slaughtering of an old classic a mildly passable way of whiling away a cold December afternoon. As it is, I found myself chewing away at the top of my popcorn container in a mixture of upset and general disbelief. Here are the problems:
1.) The original was good.
2.) In the original Alistair Sim looked like a woman, and not a man dressed as Camilla Parker-Bowles
3.) The original had Joyce Grenfell in it.
4.) Rupert Everett tried (though I feel he failed) to make the new film "shocking", since apparently the original was "shocking". (Bollocks.)
5.) The original was good.
The plot was lifted almost wholesale from the original: the school is broke and the Ministry for Education (or the DfES, as it now isn't) wants to close it down. Much hilarity ensues, mainly focussing on the fact that 12 or so years ago Colin Firth made a rather nice Mr Darcy (at one point the girls chuck him in the pond and he emerges looking a little windswept with that nice white shirt clinging to him. Phwoar, etc. If I was the BBC I'd sue for copywright.) Sensibly, though, they did not try to replicate the original entirely. They left the Joyce Grenfell character out of it altogether, and substituted George Cole with Russell Brand, which I reluctantly admit worked rather well, possibly because they rewrote him as a general lech who was clearly the worse for wear on one illegal substance or six, so Russell wasn't required to do much acting. Adding Jodie Whittaker and Stephen Fry to the cast was also clever since they're, well, good. On a purely personal note, I also experienced a certain amount of sadistic delight watching pupils of Cheltenham Ladies College getting the crap kicked out of them - I was at school with people like that, and they deserve everything they get, even if it's only fictional.
I laughed out loud only once in the whole thing, and this is perhaps because I have a twisted sense of humour rather than anything to do with the quality of the writing, as I laughed at the newspaper headline "Minister Kills Dog".
I feel, though, that the writers somehow misinterpreted the original. At the start new girl (stuck up little cow though she might be) is left to scramble around covered in soap after her delightful fellow pupils nick her clothes and turn her shower off, then put the results on YouTube. Thisisn't especially funny, it's just bullying. And as for the song "We are the best/so screw the rest"? That doesn't sound a very St T sentiment (as I doubt they would care either way), but it would be a rather accurate theme song for pretty much any of the public schools I've come across over the years, and that defeats the object, don't you think? The Emos were a nice touch (not sure about the chavs) and the Paris Hilton-esque bimbos to be expected (they ring true from my sixth form, too) but a bit more schemeing would have been nice. Gemma Arteton was fabulous, and Lily Cole surprisingly convincing as a twelve-year-old, but Miss Fritton actually comes across as disappointingly dislikable, and Colin Firth is just...well... Colin Firth, really.
Oh, and finally, the Guardian didn't like it, and I couldn't possibly disagree with the Guardian, could I?
posted by RLS at 6:49 pm
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