Wednesday, January 18, 2012

First Impressions: Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader

Hello everyone, welcome to our newest section of Old School Lane, First Impressions. Here, we're going to be focusing on anything new and upcoming and see what the first impression by just looking at a movie or TV poster or book cover. To me, a poster is the first thing I see before I see a trailer. Depending on what the poster looks like is really what either gets me excited or disappointed about an upcoming movie or TV show. To those who are saying to yourselves, "Oh, but Patricia, you shouldn't be judging a book, movie, or TV show by its cover." Well, you're absolutely right. I don't judge them by their cover, so this isn't 100% legit. But for some reason, everytime I look at a poster or cover, I can always tell how much it'll rock or suck about 93% of the time. Today we're going to look at Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader.
Keep in mind, I'm not the horror movie buff, Kevin is. But since he's busy working on his movie, I'll give my impression on the movie first before he will. Anyway, I digressed, so let's get started.



Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader is a remake of the classic 1950's B movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which in itself is a female version of The Amazing Colossal Man, another 1950's B movie. The synopsis of the movie is the following:

An aspiring college cheerleader, Cassie Stratford, consumes an experimental drug that grants her beauty and enough athletic ability to make the cheer squad. The drug has an unforeseen side effect, however - Cassie starts to grow and grow and grow.

In my opinion, this movie looks and sounds like one of the worst remakes I've ever seen. First of all, the reasoning of the cheerleader's growth is just plain ridiculous. In The Amazing Colossal Man, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning, the main character, became the colossal man by being in the wrong place in the wrong time by surviving a huge atomic explosion. For the original and remake of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Nancy Archer, the main character, was in the wrong place in the wrong time when driving away from her troubled life and meeting up with an alien along the way. But the fact that the reason that Cassie's growth was due to some experimental drug is just...odd. She took an experimental drug to increase her beauty and athletic ability? That sounds like a odd remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray or Death Becomes Her than Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

You might be thinking, "Oh, but Patricia, they already did a remake of the 50 Foot Woman in which the main character becomes a giant by an encounter with an alien. They're trying to do something different, which is good because if they do it again for the third time, it becomes redundant". Once again, you're right. But this is a remake of a movie from the 50's. When people create remakes of classic B movies, they still have to retain the campiness and references of the older movies to keep the simplistic charm. Otherwise, it feels kinda out of place or a bit awkward. The reasoning of why a person turns into a giant or monster is one of them. To me, taking experiemental drugs that goes in the wrong direction just doesn't sound right to me.

Another thing that I saw in the poster that didn't get me excited for this movie was that the movie looks like it takes place in a high school with teenagers as the main characters. That, to me, is a step downward from the original movies. Now, don't get me wrong, if it's done right, like The Blob, then I would get excited about it. But if Cassie is feeling pressured to take drugs to have a better chance to be in the cheerleading squad, that would indicate to me that the characters are shallow, narrow-minded, and cliche. Recent movies about teenagers in high school are pretty much like that in a nut shell, so what makes me have any hope about a teenage movie that suppose to be a remake of a movie from the 50's? I don't know.

Maybe, when a trailer comes out, it'll be different, but as of now. I'm not impressed. Post a comment on how you feel about the movie. If you have any suggestions about how to better First Impressions, post that as well. It'll help me and Kevin for the site and we would appreciate that. Until then, thanks for reading and chilling out with us at the Old School Lane. Catch you later.

-Patricia

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