Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme has good reason to have his fingers crossed Friday when his The Truth About Charlie opens. After all, the updated reworking of the 1963 classic romantic thriller Charade has Mark Wahlberg stepping into Cary Grant's revered shoes and Thandie Newton reprising Audrey Hepburn's likable expatriate in Paris.
Following critical and box office disappointments of recent remakes - Swept Away has brought in only $553,102 since opening Oct. 11 and The Four Feathers has grossed only $17.8 million since its release Sept. 20 - the pressure to succeed is definitely on for Charlie. And for its stars and directors.
"Neither Wahlberg nor Demme's last films were hits, and the trick is to have some hits mixed in there," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.
Demme's last film, 1998's Beloved, made a meager $22.8 million. Wahlberg's most recent film, Rock Star, didn't sing, pulling in just $17 million. Dergarabedian says: "As for Thandie Newton (Beloved), she hasn't had a hit of her own, so this film could be the one she's looking for. All three have a lot at stake.
Hollywood persists in remaking classics, despite mixed results. It's a "reflex of laziness," says Andrew Sarris, film critic, author and film professor at New York's Columbia University.
"You can't bring back Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Even with those two, the plot of Charade was just serviceable. Charade wasn't great, it was sort of low-grade Hitchcock," he says.
Early buzz has not been promising. "I don't think interest is all that high for the film," Gitesh Pandya of Boxofficeguru.com says.
Charlie's journey to the big screen has been a long time coming. Demme, who won an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs, originally wanted Will Smith in the Grant role. But by the time the script was completed, Smith was committed to Ali. Demme always wanted Newton as the Hepburn stand-in.
Besides casting setbacks, rewriting and updating the script was problematic. Jessica Bendinger, who scripted the teen comedy Bring It On, was originally brought in by Universal, the studio releasing the film. But another of the credited Charlie screenwriters, Steve Schmidt, acknowledges that the Bendinger/Demme teaming "was a collaboration not to Jonathan's liking."
Further raising suspicions is a credited writer named Peter Joshua, which also happens to be one of the aliases Grant used in the original. Demme says, "Peter Joshua is Peter Stone (screenwriter of Charade), who was too modest to have his name appear twice in the credits." However, other Charlie insiders say that 72-year-old Stone's supposed modesty was more a case of embarrassment in being associated with the update.
At a few early screenings, some moviegoers have erupted in laughter during dramatic moments. "Much of the dialogue seemed out of place, with a '50s or '60s flair, but doesn't work in a film with a contemporary setting," says Michael Kyrioglou, 39, who attended a Charlie screening last month in Washington, D.C.
"This is a movie that is supposed to be fun in every way, including watching Mark Wahlberg as a fish out of water," Demme says. "It took me a while to realize how funny it is because it's not really a comedy, but the movie really has an aggressive sense of humor."
Still, the final judgment will come from audiences who, says Dergarabedian, might be ready for Charlie. "There is a place for this film. People who have seen the trailer are interested, and it's different enough from anything else out there. Wahlberg can pull in an audience; young women come in droves for him. Planet of the Apes wasn't loved by critics, but it had a huge opening."
