Thank God, darlings, for my "Sound Of Music" post! Had that not been there, many would think this Evil Child Month--first Amma Crellin on "Sharp Objects," then those awful real life bitches Lindsey Moss and Dallas Baron, and now Emma Grossman.
Who the hell is Emma Grossman? Well, she was always better known by another, and better name, Rhoda Penmark. Yes, darlings, it is yet another remake of "The Bad Seed," and this, I have to say is the worst. When will they stop trying to outdo this story? The 1956 film, campy and dated as it is, is still the gold standard. With its cast, and hysterics, it still reaches a level of suspense that this version does not begin to approach.
The bare bones of the story is maintained--the framework, that is. Some characters have been eliminated, and new ones created, under a different gender, which really does not work. The story is so condensed, it provides no narrative context.
That said, I have to say McKenna Grace as Emma/Rhoda is the best thing in the show. They cast her strong, unlike in the 1985 version. The trouble is, everyone around her, with the possible exception of Sarah Dugdale, who plays Nanny Chloe, the stand in for Leroy, is up to her level. She and Grace get some sparks going, but how much more satisfying, campy and ironically fun it would have to have had Rebecca DeMornay play this role, much in the understated way she played Peyton Flanders in "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle." That is the kind of wit, coupled with suspense, that this show needs.
Rob Lowe is so ineffectual and clueless as the father, I almost wish the child had done him in. Well, she does get a chance to try, but he is then shot, in a contrived last moment, at
the cabin (the climax takes place at a vacation spot) caretaker, where father David is shot to death, and Emma/Rhoda, sneeringly, goes off to live with his sister, Aunt Angela, whose family has no idea what they are soon in for.
So, yes, the ending is not censored. But it almost doesn't matter because Lowe is so passive, works up no emotional concern or frenzy, and doesn't engender the kind of sympathy Nancy Kelly did, even with her histrionics. A little more of those was needed from Lowe, instead of endless shots of him emerging from the shower, showing how good he can look in his Fifties. Who the hell cares? You never did anything for me, anyway, Rob!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Forget the whole Claude Daigle-Eileen Heckart trope. The child's name is Milo Curtis, and, until he beats her out for a Citizenship Medal (??????), they seem to be cordial friends. But when the camera pans Milo overlooking a cliff, plunging down into the water, it becomes obvious what is going to happen, at the hands of Emma. And it does. His mother, here called Maggie Curtis, is played by an actress named Shauna Johannesen, who has one screaming scene, but is not the fleshed out, devastated mother Eileen Heckart was, whose performance tore at the heart. Her, hers is just a throwaway role.
Save for the almost gratuitous scene, where original "Bad Seed" herself, Patty McCormack, now 73, is seen as a child psychiatrist, evaluating Emma, where she delivers the pithy line, "She reminds me of myself, when I was her age." there is really no need to see this abortive remake. In fact if one is not a "Bad Seed aficionado, one will not get the irony of that scene, or the one where Emma lovingly runs both sides of her hands, across her father's cheeks.
So much for your great idea, Rob! As for screenwriter, Barbara Marshall, what the hell did you think you were doing? This should be a template for not to remake something having been done so perfectly in the first place.
And no piano playing? No "Au Clair De La Lune?"
How dare they?????????????????
Patty should not have bothered: she waited sixty years, passing on every other remake offer, then suddenly THIS tripe passed her stink-o-meter? She must have figured WTH, she'll be dead before they try it again, so let the people see her one last time.
ReplyDeleteWhat a dreadful, dreadful misfire: I didn't expect great, but I wasn't expecting to be so frikkin bored that I speed-searched thru the entire last 2/3rd of the film (thank god I recorded it: I defy anyone to sit thru it otherwise). Even my poor mother, who loves this kind of story, said she changed the channel after just 20 mins because she was bored out of her skull.
The whole trainwreck comes down to Rob Lowe, full stop. He was the one who got it produced and nursed it into being. Given the VERY interesting, unusual, fascinating roles he's chosen over the past few years, I expected him to give the father some real snap and character, and jazz the daughter up for 2018 without losing her essential psychopathy. But it looks like the past three years were just a lucky random turn he took, as this turkey indicates he's back to being a crashing bore. Too bad: his performance as the morally conflicted, Vatican-defying Catholic priest in "You, Me, And The Apocalypse" was the best thing he ever did (even those who hate him were amazed how good he was in that).
Only two things were of interest in this horrible remake: seeing Patty McCormick as an old lady, and a few (too few) good scenes where the little girl showed her true colors (rehearsing her smile and coos of affection for daddy in her mirror, dead eyed contempt for the boy she kills, complete lack of interest in passing for normal, and pure unhinged hatred when challenged). None of that is worth sitting thru this clunky snoozer, tho: even hardcore Rhoda Penmark fans should give it a miss. Damn movie couldn't even deliver the goods with Patty: her psychiatrist is portrayed as an absolute imbecile just so she could have an excuse for the "she reminds me of me" groaner. Are we supposed to believe this professional couldn't immediately see right thru the transparent Mary Sunshine act the kid was presenting? Even if you didn't know the story at all, and began watching the movie right at that scene, you would have sensed there was something bizarrely fake in this child's affect, yet the psychiatrist bought it.
Just when you think it can't get any worse, they completely bungle the ending. OF COURSE, the moron father doesn't bother to leave a paper trail or document his suspicions at all, OF COURSE he doesn't stop to think his psycho kid might be five steps ahead of him once he figures her out (which gets him poisoned), and OF COURSE his idiot sister calls the cops to have him conveniently killed, leaving the kid free to murder again, instead of considering he might actually be on to something during his last desperate phone conversation with her.
The only good to come out viewing this mess: we now know what child actor can play YOU when your life story is made into a miniseries, RQ. This little girl was doing a dead-on impersonation of your reaction to every dullard and miscreant who ever crossed your path: if I ever wondered what you were like as a child, her performance gave me my answer.
ReplyDeleteYou are right; very much
as I was as a child. Remember,
I am the one who told my second
grade teacher, whom I disliked,
"I am a tax payer, and I demand
my rights!"
The little girl was actually good.
David found it boring as well. The
1956 film can never be topped, so
please stop trying. Maculay
Cukin's film "The Good Son" should
have been the death knell for all
"Bad Seed" remakes.
All the bare bones of the story,
but no juice, or suspense!