Review: A New ‘Rocky Horror,’ Stripped of Subversive Magic

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/arts/television/review-rocky-horror-remake-fox.html

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Some things can’t be replicated or recaptured, and thanks to Fox we now know that one of them is the subversive magic of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

On Thursday night, the network serves up its new version of the cult film (for some reason titled “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again”), and although it’s moderately entertaining at times, it never makes clear why it needed to be attempted. That’s the burden of any remake, of course, and from that perspective the project may have been doomed from the start. Certain performances simply can’t be topped.

Tim Curry’s original rendition of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania,” falls into that category, and so do many of the supporting performances in that film, which came out in 1975. The job of filling Mr. Curry’s shoes — insert your own footwear joke there, by the way — in the new version falls to Laverne Cox, who doesn’t get to make a jaw-dropping entrance the way Mr. Curry did and never does quite catch up to him.

The old saw about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery isn’t really true for remakes — find something fresh, or go home — yet imitation is what mostly comes to mind here. If there were something revelatory to be gleaned by having Ms. Cox, a well-known transgender performer, rather than a man play the role, she and her director, Kenny Ortega, didn’t find it. Only in the show’s outlandishly maudlin finale does she really put her stamp on things.

The show, you’ll recall, involves a virginal couple, Brad and Janet, who become stranded during a storm and seek help at Frank-N-Furter’s castle and laboratory. Ryan McCartan and Victoria Justice are harmless enough in those roles, but both feel as if they’re merely following the footsteps of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, the 1975 film’s memorable pair.

Reeve Carney, Broadway’s original Spider-Man, is very watchable as Riff-Raff, Frank-N-Furter’s creepy aide, though even he is mostly just doing what Richard O’Brien (who created the stage musical on which the movie is based) did in the role. Adam Lambert has fun as Eddie, the ill-fated delivery boy, and it’s nice to see Mr. Curry, who had a stroke several years ago, take on the role of narrator.

Mr. Ortega does manage to stage the musical numbers pretty well, and anyone who hasn’t seen “Rocky Horror” in a while might initially be struck by just how brilliantly brash it must have seemed when it first appeared on the London stage in 1973. Such great songs. Such bizarre goings-on. It was a dazzling assault on repression in an age when there was still quite a lot of that in the air, and the way it was embraced, especially once the film came out, was a wonderful thing to see and experience.

The movie, as we know, spawned an audience-participation phenomenon — people shouting ritualized lines in anticipation of the actors’ dialogue, covering up with newspaper during the rainstorm scene and so on. It was (and still is) a lovely example of communal bonding. Mr. Ortega, having reminded us of all that’s lovable about “Rocky Horror” with his energetic opening scenes, then proceeds to kill the buzz with a terrible decision: His framing device is that people are watching his production in a movie theater, enacting the beloved rituals.

Perhaps hoping he’s somehow being meta, he keeps cutting away to show this movie theater crowd doing its thing. Not only does this undermine his actors, who are having enough trouble building momentum, but it also feels like a network trying to horn in on a grass-roots movement. “See?” these interruptions scream. “We get the whole ‘Rocky Horror’ viewer ritual thing!” It’s soul-killing in the same way that hearing a cherished rock anthem used in a television commercial is.

Fox did something similar with its live “Grease!” early this year, sticking an audience in certain scenes to clap and whoop. Fake excitement never enhances; it only underscores that a production lacks self-confidence.