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Melrose remake: Canny revamp or just vacant?

It looks slicker, the cast is pretty and even the acting is better, but the characters aren't memorable say some crits.

melrose-placeThe reviews are trickling in for the Melrose Place remake which premieres tomorrow in the US.

Most reviews are agreed on its glossy look, but few are getting excited by the story and characters. Is this 9-0-2-Uh-Oh all over again?

Hollywood Reporter said:
Take two is a canny revamp, well-lit and visually eye-popping in a shadowy-neon way that hints at the old with several familiar faces while showcasing newcomers including redheaded Ashlee Simpson-Wentz.

Writers Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer blur the camp/mystery lines and give everyone a secret history, disappointing parental units and mixed motivations. Before the hour’s out, one original cast member is murdered, several likely suspects emerge, two residents are tempted to sell out and one couple gets engaged. You’d need a Stanford grad’s flow chart to understand all the platonic and nonplatonic relationships here.

NY Times said:
The current version is slicker-looking than the old; the lighting is sultrier, and the stunned reaction shots are fewer. Much of the acting is marginally improved since the days when Andrew Shue, playing the doltish writer Billy Campbell, approached each scene as if the script demanded that he look like a 6-year-old told that he wasn’t getting a puppy for his birthday.

No one appearing on “Melrose Place” 2.0 is nearly that dreadful, and the one-liners that remind us that we are not watching the television of a historic golden age retain the zesty camp of the series’s first iteration. “If it wasn’t for me,” Sydney Andrews tells the young protégé she has schooled in her lunatic brand of venality, “you’d still be wearing Juicy sweatsuits, French tips and a bad dye job.”

Variety said:
Judging such a series is nigh-impossible based on two installments, especially given the show’s reliance on big twists to propel the plot. At this point, about all one can definitively say is whether the cast has potential (they do) and the situations are involving (they aren’t, unless you’re predisposed to such nonsense).

On the plus side, the producers pay sly homage to the program’s roots (Thomas Calabro also turns up as his original character) without appearing beholden to it, indicating that the show will have the latitude to evolve into its own entity — unleashing enough glitz and pulp to make “Entourage” seem relatively weighty and intellectually demanding.

Ultimately, in a fragmented TV neighborhood where the empty new “90210” improbably earned a second term, this latest revival might contain enough of its own zip to linger as well — albeit more by playing to a new generation than those curious to see what they’ve done with the old “Place.”

LATimes said:
Nothing is said that hasn’t been said, nothing is done that hasn’t been done and as the group of friends who share little save a shoe size (DK: or a Shue size?) and an address gather poolside, even the sunlight looks fake, as if the complex were in a dome, a captive ecosystem on another planet where scientists are attempting an experiment in social regeneration. An experiment that one suspects is about to go terribly wrong.

Chicago Tribune said:
Empty calories. That’s what the remake of “Melrose Place” (8 p.m. Central Tuesday, WGN-Ch. 9; two stars) is — it’s the TV equivalent of snack food that doesn’t really fill you up.

Now, don’t think I’m dissing the idea of indulging in non-nutritious fare. The desire to revel in derivative melodrama starring pretty people is nothing to be ashamed of. And the new cast of “Melrose Place” is indeed good-looking. The problem is, very few of these actors — or characters — are memorable. …..Trouble is, very few of the show’s other cast members make much of an impression, aside from Cassidy and Stephanie Jacobsen, whose medical-student plot is lifted straight from the Soap 101 handbook. On the other end of the talent scale, as Los Angeles newcomer Violet, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz simply stops the show cold every time she says a line.

16 Responses

  1. Give it a chance over the summer when Good News Week has finished for the year.Surely there must be people out there Fed Up of the Rubbish SBS has been dishing at Us between 8:30 and 9:30pm in the form of recycled SouthParks.

  2. So Ten aren’t fast tracking this then? Oh well looks like a lot of people will be downloading it and when Ten finally decide to put it on it will rate dismally! poor Ten.

  3. Why do they have to ruin pop culture icons with pi** weak remakes. If I watched this, I’d be constantly wondering what Sydney Andrews was actually feeling because Laura Leighton’s face is so wrinkle free that it doesn’t show any expressions any more? 😛

  4. 90210 deserves to come back.How many of us who used to look forward to Monday Nights on Ten switched on only to find Good News Week has taken over the 8:30pm timeslot.

  5. @Marco – I started watching S1 of the original a while back, and it was just dreadful! These days it would have been axed before Heather Locklear even got near it.

  6. S1 of the original Melrose was fairly lacklustre until Amanda (Heather Locklear) showed up in the final few episodes…maybe history will repeat itself. I for one will judge it for myself when I see it. I’m looking forward to it.

  7. I hate to say it, but I think this will she sh**e, just like 90210… It was a bitchin’ show back in the 90’s, but sometimes, even if you’re running out of ideas, shows like this are best left untouched.

  8. ahhh who cares? No-one will surely watch this as a serious drama, but more knowing it is seriously “camp” and perfect for light summer viewing… with a skin full of chardy and/or beer!

  9. The CW has gone down hill since 2007 when Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls ended, this sounds like more crap from them.

    Will TEN even bring 90210 back in the summer to pair it with the new Melrose Place?

  10. Well, I guess I will be able to tell you what I think as a viewer in the next day or so! 🙂
    Since when have the critics ever been right anyway (except for you David, of course) … I did find that 90210 did not get me hooked, but then neither did the original, Melrose was my favourite back then too!
    Jack!

  11. It’d be foolish for Ten to fast track this after they got stung by the painfully dull 90210 remake series. Instead they can test it over this year’s summer recess. The other bad news for Ten is Variety has given the Glee show’s 2nd and 3rd episodes a negative review, saying they’re fairly disappointing.

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