Ok, Hollywood. This is your official warning: Cease and desist remaking the crappy movies and cartoons from my childhood, immediately. Find some new and interesting way to get people to the box office at some other generation’s expense. May I suggest you take on Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies or Gone With The Wind? You could really spice up those cinematic gems with computer generated effects and soundtracks featuring no-talent popular music icons. Huh? Huh? Whaddya say? Most of the people who are old enough to remember first seeing those on the silver screen are certifiably dead or hooked up to life support and a colostomy bag Pick on them, they aren’t gonna say anything. Even if they were capable of communication, they’d probably tell you stories about sugar rationing, thinking they were talking to their nephew, Rusty.
You remade Garfield, I didn’t make a peep. I sat in silence while you bastardized Charlie’s Angels…twice. I even let the straight to DVD remake of Dirty Dancing slide. This chink in my armor started to show right around the time you revisited Alvin and The Chipmunk’s. But, it’s The Smurfs that has put me right over the edge. Have you no moral compass? Do you have your smurfing head shoved so far up your smurf that you cannot see that you are ruining the memories I hold dear?
Never mind, the fact that it costs me $60.00 to enjoy a complete movie going experience. Now you want to make me sit through 180 minutes of shit I saw 20 years ago, that sucked the first time around and still sucks in 3-D, even though you’ve added the voice of Katy Perry to the equation? What’s next, an updated version of Mannequin, The Snorks or Splash with that vapid, musical wasteland Taylor Swift and one of those Jonas Brother idiots? No more, I say!
I was a willing participant in the 1980’s, I didn’t know any better. My logic was clouded by Aqua Net fumes and the lead that leaked into my system from wearing a multitude of high priced, polymer-based, brightly colored, Swiss-made watches. The subliminal messages in Debbie Gibson’s music brain washed me, making me believe “Electric Youth” didn’t smell like Pine Sol and jelly beans with a subtle note of dead possum.
I have evolved. The 1990’s enabled my angst filled rage and perfected my crowd-surfing abilities. I have seen the light, in the form of The Red Hot Chili Peppers rocking out with enormous light bulbs fastened to their craniums. I drink imported coffee and subscribe to The New Yorker through a link on Facebook, now. I have Coriander on my spice rack and invest in the stock market. This makes me a card-carrying adult and an active member of this consumer society whose intelligence you insult with every preview. If you even think of recycling Reality Bites, High Fidelity or Empire Records…I will be mailing dog feces to every movie executive in the City of Angels. Yeah, that’s right…I’m declaring turd warfare.
You can no longer take the lazy way out. I will not be falling for your advertising campaigns; trying to push a new, fresh angle on the characters that inspired the memorabilia I finally parted with at a garage sale in 2005. I demand you create new animated entertainment with poorly developed characters, repetitive story lines and lack-luster graphics for our children, and our children’s children. Papa Smurf did not need to be given more emotional depth or drawn with fingers that actually bend. No one should have had to witness that.
You have your marching orders, Hollywood, do as I say or check your mail. I have a St. Bernard with irritable bowel syndrome, a shovel, and access to an endless supply of shipping materials. I’m not afraid to use it.