Imagination Required

I’m not sure why we needed an “American” version of the movie Death at a Funeral. The British version is just 3 years old. It was hilarious and quirky and… well, very British. Most importantly for my tastes, it starred Alan Tudyk (an American, by the way), getting involuntarily tweaked out on drugs and running naked on the rooftop. That, my friends, is a formula for a movie wanting to earn it’s way into my collection.

Sweet, ginger Alan is exactly what I want to see naked, soaked in a drug-induced sweat, and swinging his ass everywhere. There’s something about that man that makes him the stuff of homoerotic fantasy for me. The face and body are completely attackable (in the good way), but it’s the intelligence behind the eyes that turns him into an object of lust for me. I imagine him to be the sort of guy that, after wrestling him to a screaming submission, I’d like to just chat with about current events (both of us sweat-soaked, naked, and his head still captured in my figure-4 headlock).

The American version appears to be just about a screen-by-screen remake of the oh-so-recently made movie. James Marsden is the one ending up sweat-soaked and drug addled on the roof. By no means would I suggest that I wouldn’t like to see James stripped and shiny. Personally, I’d have preferred his nakedness to appear side-by-side with Hugh Jackman in an X-Men chapter, but whatever… James is a little obscenely cute-faced and beautifully shaped. Sure, I’ll be happy to see him naked on the roof.

But don’t expect me to be able to resist comparing him unfavorably to the joys that are Alan’s appearance in the original. Line the two of them up (on a roof, naked, sweat-soaked), and I’d have to say I’d kick James’ ass to the gutter for a chance at some full-contact throw down with Alan.

Is there so little imagination left in Hollywood that we have to “remake” widely available, already abundantly entertaining independent movies from elsewhere moments after they’re produced? Someone needs an injection of fresh imagination. For example, I can think of dozens of scenarios involving James Marsden sweat-soaked and naked that don’t require him appearing in a film originally produced just three years ago. For that matter, I’ve already cast Alan Tudyk in a homoerotic wrestling scenario, where he teams up with Nathan Fillion for some particularly sadistic action against the househubands, James Denton and Doug Savant. I need a producer…