The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again

'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' is a film that still holds up to me as enormous fun and is a great experience when seeing it at a midnight showing which adds to the atmosphere. There are a lot of people who don't see the appeal and understandably, as it is not a film for all tastes.

What makes 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' still great fun to watch are its timeless songs (especially "Time Warp" and "Sweet Transvestite"), a clever and very funny script, a wonderfully naughty and risqué atmosphere that pushed boundaries like no film had ever before and Tim Curry's landmark performance that deservedly turned him into a star. Whether you like it or not, it is difficult to deny that it is an ahead of its time film and that there's very few if any films like it.

It is always fairer to judge something as its own entity, but there are times where it is very difficult to compare two versions when so much that worked so well previously fares disastrously here. That is the case with this 2016 TV production, as an adaptation of the film and even the stage show it's an abomination but it is also an example of something where people would still be making the same criticisms without having seen or needing to see the original.

Redeeming values are very difficult to find on the whole, but two things are done well. One is the cool opening scene in one of the few song renditions that treats the previous film version's with even a shade of respect. The other is the courageous performance of Tim Curry in the very small role of the Criminologist, despite being so badly diminished by his stroke four years ago that hasn't stopped him doing what he loves and it's not stopped him giving a sincere, moving and authoritative performance.

However, the production does suffer badly from being too clean and too glamorous in production values when part of the film's charm was its decadence and that it feels far too watered down and too safe, there's very little to none of the sense that the film pushed boundaries or what made it so daring, wickedly naughty and unique. Despite the songs being so great themselves, the re-arrangements certainly aren't, sounding and performed like they came from 'Glee' or something from the Disney Channel. Only "Science Fiction" and "Hot Patootie" are treated with respect, with "Time Warp" being an absolute train-wreck in every regard and "Sweet Transvestite" was just dull with Frank's entrance (iconic before) lacking impact completely.

As for the script, little of the naughtiness and wit comes through due to erratic and too fast line delivery, so the lines feel like they were thrown away rather than relished. Aside from Curry, another huge issue is bad casting. Topping or matching Tim Curry is impossible, but Laverne Cox (also have to agree that Frank does not work when played as a woman, which points the point of the character, causing distracting and constant gender confusion that were very likely accidental) even as a standalone performance tries far too hard that everything about her performance becomes flat and forced.

Ryan McCarten and Victoria Justice sound, look and act like they were auditioning for 'Glee', while Ben Vereen is a forgettable Dr Scott weirdly made up, Reeve Carney overdoes it as Riff Raff and strains his way through his whole music, Christina Milian is nowhere near sinister or conniving enough as Magenta and Annaleigh Ashford sleepwalks her way through Columbia. Adam Lambert also had potential to be a redeeming quality and while his singing is brilliant he would have made a much better Frank, he is too polished and theatrical for Eddie. Chemistry between the performers is non-existent and the choreography is both leaden and overblown performed with lumbering energy.

Overall, a huge disappointment even when watching it with an open mind and without prejudice. Did think it was not a good idea but have been pleasantly surprised by how potentially bad ideas have actually been executed well, but this TV production fails spectacularly when compared and on its own. 2/10 Bethany Cox

LOVE the new opening (re-envisioned) LOVE the supporting cast (especially Riff-Raff), and I was diving into the pool. . . great great great . . enjoying it. Like showing the audience. Loving the new music and dance I was ALL IN. . .until. . . um

Dr. Frank-N-Furter. The character needs to be BOLD and shocking and BOTH masculine AND feminine at the same time. Needs to be playful, violent, and sexual or the premise does not work. FnF needs to take command of the stage AND seduce everyone. In leather and fishnet stockings. The seduction is what MAKES the show.

Where was the raw sex appeal? The boldness, the Master toying with a mouse? The line, "Don't be upset by the way I look" fell flat with a tentative FnF wearing a red sequined dress from Golden Girls.

The original film of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was flawed and at times sloppy, but it was brimming with heart and a genuine weirdness of character. It could be confusing to follow at times but it remained a mostly straight-faced homage to the weird science films of the 1950s with the added attraction of sexual and gender twisting, but crucially presented without comment or focus - this is one of the reasons it succeeded so well and why it became an underground hit.

This new version of this classic film made sure to disembowel the original, reach up and pull out its heart, and to then airbrush the empty husk that remained.

One of the major downfalls is the absolutely lifeless soundtrack recordings of the songs: they sound as if they have been compressed and muted of life to ensure that nobody's heart rises above sixty beats per minutes. Over this limp soundtrack the characters mime their songs, mostly badly, some not even making a huge effort to even sync up at times (particularly guilty of this is Columbia).

As to the casting, gone are the individual characteristics and introduced are a parade of generically handsome and pretty boys and gals with all the individuality of a Toys R Us dolls aisle. The original worked because it was played mainly straight; the new version gives us hammy overacting with too much self-awareness which obviously does nothing to draw an audience in; it's as if the new production had either never watched the original film or had so grossly misread it as to be almost imbecilic. Talking of Frankestein, we are treated to an on-the-nose depiction of Mary Shelley's gravestone, despite the fact she died in London, England; anything to ram down our throats the Frankenstein connection! In the original film Rocky was slightly neanderthal in appearance - blankish expression that reminded us of Frankenstein's monster (after all that's what he represents) with a hard muscular body, with tight buns showing through tight gold undies; the new Rocky looks like a gym-bro with dipped highlights who may or may not be slightly constipated: he is more Brut than brute.

Dr Frank-N-Furter, crucially, is a transvestite not a transsexual - Transsexual is the name of the planet. The stunt casting of Laverne Cox is badly done: whereas the original had a skinny flat-chested Tim Curry working brilliantly as a transvestite, Laverne Cox is a female Dr Frank-N-Furter and, as the transvestite she sings about being, should be dressed in a male attire: this casting was ill-thought-out. I enjoyed Laverne in Orange in the New Black but her attempts to channel Tim Curry's origination of Frank-N-Furter is embarrassing: the British accent is all over the place, often with an American twang at the end of phrases, and often sounded like it's being strangled out of her. Her rendition of 'I'm Going Home' at the climax should have been emotional and stirring, as in the original, but it was in fact as empty as the preceding hour and a half had been. Speaking of the climax, Riff-Raff and Magenta strongly resembled a pair of Red Dwarf villains in their silver get-up, and the castle crumbling brought to mind the old British children's show Knightmare.

The film also suffered from an almost total lack of character delineation - far more-so than even the original which, as I said before, certain had its sloppy moments of confusion. Magenta and Columbia were more marginal than in the original and Eddie's cameo was almost completely pointless if not for the fact that he is used as a postmortem device later on in the film.

The film also suffered from a real lack of chemistry, not only between the viewer and the cast but also between cast members; Rocky and Janet's bedroom scene lacked any sexuality or tension whatsoever: Hank drinking Manny's corpse-water in Swiss Army Man was more romantic and sexual than this white-bread colourless scene; not to mention the bed-hopping hilarity of the original was almost entirely airbrushed to be as inoffensive as possible.

The nod to the cult of audience participation at theatrical showings of the film fell very flat also - the audience seemed to be a TV exec's idea of what edgy, weird, non-mainstream people looked like in the 1980s (TV punks) and 1990s (TV grunge).

The saddest crime of all was the rolling in of stroke-victim Tim Curry in a pathetic attempt to give credence and validation to this travesty - the only moments of any emotion in the film were when he appeared on screen and my heart filled with sadness at what they had persuaded him to do, and to watch him valiantly attempt his line-readings.

I am not looking forward to an anemic version of Cronenberg's / Burroughs' "Naked Lunch".

First things first, I was among the few who was genuinely excited about this remake. I thoroughly enjoyed 2015's "Rocky Horror Show Live" (check You Tube) and the various other musical TV productions of recent years. However, my enthusiasm gradually transformed into disgust for what I was witnessing. When I was in junior high and high school, I was ridiculed for my obsessive love of Rocky Horror. Then in 1991, Fox debuted the movie for Halloween and the next day, the very same kids who'd made fun of me were Time Warping in the school hallway. It was weird, and I later realized that was THE moment when RHPS began to mutate from a subversive cult thing to a mainstream classic. Watching this glossy travesty, I found myself overwhelmed by that same uneasy feeling I had a quarter-century ago after Fox first aired the film.

It took me a while to figure out the problem with the 2016 version. The cast and crew bestowed it with the same respect that audiences have shown the film in theaters for decades: They've treated it like it's schlock to be made fun of. There were certainly campy winks and nods in the original, but when it came time for the characters to emote, you believed Tim Curry could abruptly snap and violently murder someone or Susan Sarandon was having spontaneous orgasms. Those nuances are mostly absent in the performances here, and it's so self-aware and Disney-fied that it's kind of insulting. It's one thing for the audience to mock the screen, but most of the actors are mocking the characters that they themselves are portraying, which just doesn't work.

The dishonor of worst performance goes to Ben Vereen, who was woefully miscast as Dr. Scott. Placing the black Vereen in the role of uncle to white Adam Lambert's Eddie was a questionable decision to begin with, but Vereen mugs his way through his scenes, acting as if he's starring in some insipid kiddie comedy. It's downright bizarre. Runner-up in the worst performer category goes to Laverne Cox, who gives an admittedly exuberant but ultimately hollow performance as the mad scientist. Cox offered none of the underlying menace that Curry displayed in the role (Tim Curry could kill you, but Laverne Cox only seems capable of a whopping bitchslap) and she played it like she was the singular star in a glitzy drag show, mimicking Curry's syllables and vocal inflections with an annoying, fluctuating British/Southern Belle accent. The good Franks (Anthony Head, for example) fully inhabited the character and injected it with their own stamp, which Cox did not.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this production (overlooking the fact that the dancers aren't doing the steps being audibly described in the titular Time Warp) is how they've systematically whitewashed the rampant sexuality which was so pivotal to the flimsy plot. Today sexual deviancy is socially acceptable, other network TV offerings frequently devolve into scenes that would have once been considered X-rated -- and the Fox network aired the original film numerous times throughout the 1990s with minimal trims, so there's really no excuse. Casting Cox as a woman (regardless of the fact that she used to be a dude) completely undermines the story of the wholesome Leave it to Beaver couple being torn apart by a kinky sex freak. It was the gay community which embraced the movie back in the '70s, we have at least one openly gay and one transgendered star, and yet virtually all traces of homosexuality (as well as incest) were eliminated. It's oddly incongruous and completely destroys the narrative.

That's not to say that everything's bad. Adam Lambert and Ivy Levan are stand-outs as Eddie and the Usherette. Annaleigh Ashford gave a radically different interpretation of Columbia which works well, given the character's story arc. Similarly, Reeve Carney made Riff-Raff his own. Victoria Justice has an awesome singing voice. Tim Curry lends an appropriate air of dignity, and although he was physically unable to do all the things that his part required (such as turning the pages of a book), they came up with an inventive workaround. Nice to see him again, even in poor health. Unfortunately, the cons FAR outweigh the pros in this production.

Generally speaking, the remake that no one wanted (dating back to the days when MTV was going to do it) has lived up to all of the hateful hype. It brings nothing new to the table, it's like a pallid carbon-copy on tissue paper. Your best bet's to stick with the original, see the 2015 version or catch a live show instead.

This remake attempts to stay true to the original. While the story line modifications are fitting the performances are lacking the emotion of the original.

The musical performances also stay true to the original, which I enjoyed but it was very difficult to get over the overproduction of the vocal performances as it clearly highlights the lip syncing. I feel that if the vocal performances were recorded during filming that it would be much better.

The acting lacks any emotion. It's like watching the cast going through the motions and running lines to an empty audience.

I want to give a better rating, but this is not how we should be honouring a classic.