D

Nostalgia buffs may be pleased with neophyte director Kevin Tancharoen’s updating of Alan Parker’s 1980 picture, a hit with a smash title song that spawned a TV series that lingered on in syndication after its network cancellation, as well as a Broadway musical. But this new “Fame” is unlikely to approach the success of its predecessor.

Once again the locale is the High School for the Performing Arts in New York City, an extremely selective joint that attracts would-be students from all over. Allison Burnett’s script simply covers one class’ progress from audition through the four years of instruction to graduation, concentrating on the experience of a few students. That might be a fine idea for a mini-series or franchise, but crammed into a mere hundred minutes (a full half-hour less than Parker’s film)—with plenty of time devoted to musical performances—it makes for pretty thin characters and even thinner individual stories.

The kids on whom the spotlight falls include Denise (Naturi Naughton), an aspiring concert pianist who actually yearns to sing hip-hip, something her stern father adamantly opposes; Jenny (Kay Panabaker), a winsome but single-minded girl who has to learn to relax; Joy (Anna Maria Perez de Tagle), whose gig on “Sesame Street” endangers her grades; Alice (Kherington Payne), an athletic dancer; Kevin (Paul McGill), an Iowa boy who wants to go into professional ballet; Walter (Perez), an on-the-make record producer; Neil (Paul Iacono), a middle-class Steven Spielberg wannabe; Marco (Asher Book), a white-bread young man with an easygoing manner and great vocal chords; and Malik (Collins Pennie), the angrily fatherless kid whose hard-working mother wants him to do something practical and whose pent-up rage serves him well in acting class. Among the faculty are Principal Simms (Debbie Allen), music teacher Mr. Cranston (Kelsey Grammer), voice instructor Ms. Rowan (Fran Rowan), dancing mistress Ms. Kraft (Bebe Neuwirth) and acting teacher Mr. Dowd (Charles S. Dutton).

Of course there’s plenty of triumph and heartbreak, sometimes intermingled. Denise fulfills her dreams, overcoming even her father’s opposition, but in the process Victor’s producing hopes are dashed. Joy gets a TV job but has to leave school. Jenny loosens up and has a romance with the easygoing Marco, but Arthur (Cody Longo), a sleazy ex-student now a television star, comes between them by inviting her to his on-set trailer for an “audition.” Alice gets accepted to a prestigious dance company, but Kevin is told his dreams will never be fulfilled, and contemplates suicide. Neil gets a producer for his first film, but the guy turns out to be a crook. And Malik, of course, must learn to channel his anger usefully into his performances.

Though their thespian skills seem minimal, some of these kids have real talent in other areas and get to show it off in set-pieces: that’s especially true of Naughton and Book on the vocal side and Payne on the dance floor. But the sketchiness of the screenplay leaves even them stranded in the would-be dramatic stuff, riddled with clichés as it is from beginning to end. The rift between Denise and her dad would be below par for an episode of “DeGrassi Junior High,”the whole plot about Kevin is the purest treacle, and Neil’s instruction in the ways of the con is heavy-handed in the extreme. The less said about the Jenny-Marco romance, the better; a rooftop break-up scene between them is embarrassingly juvenile, and neither Panabaker nor Book has the acting chops to lessen the ridiculousness. The adults fare little better. Their characters are cardboard too, and only Mullaly gets an opportunity to show off her pipes in a bar sequence.

The singing-and-dancing episodes, capped by the inevitable all-school show at the end, provide some relief from the turgid dramatics, but while cinematographer Scott Kevan shoots them well enough, they’ve been edited by Myron I. Kerstein—presumably at Tancharoen’s insistence–in the hyperkinetic style favored in most modern musicals, so that they’re basically just snippets that don’t allow you to see, or appreciate, a full performance. It’s a pity that the approach, which emphasizes flash over skill, ruins what might have been some pleasant numbers. Otherwise the movie is technically fine.

But ultimately “Fame” pales not only in comparison to Parker’s original, but against another recent high-school musical, “Bandslam,” which was much more knowing and enjoyable. That movie’s formulaic too, but it uses the formula with far more verve than this one does. See it instead of this misguided exhumation of what was once a pretty lively piece.