I'll put this here. I thought it was kinda funny.
The winners of the invent-your-own-movie-based-on-an-'80s-TV-show contest. - By Dana Stevens - Slate Magazine
When
The A-Team came out earlier this month, I decided to make that movie's flimsy excuse for existence into an even flimsier pretext for a
Slate "Summer Movies" contest. I challenged readers to send me their elevator pitches for a big-screen version of an '80s TV show.
.....
*An astonishing number of people suggested casting Dakota Fanning as V.I.C.I., the obedient robot-child in
Small Wonder. The best of these pitches came from Joshua Freemire: "Dakota Fanning plays V.I.C.I. the child robot in a big-screen
Small Wonder. This time, however, we flip the script: After a shipping mix-up, V.I.C.I. is being raised in crushing poverty, a la
Precious. Theme: How Does a Heartless Robot Handle the Heartbreak of Systemic Poverty? Total Oscar-bait for Dakota."
*More than one entry noted the thematic overlap between
Golden Girls and
Sex and the City, proposing that, if their franchise keeps going, Carrie, Miranda, et al. can one day be cast as the superannuated Miami foursome. But my favorite
Golden Girls pitch was the loopiest one, from Henry Visotski: "After four black-ops agents (Angelina Jolie, Uma Thurman, Halle Berry, and Robin Williams) are framed for the murder of an Afghan politician, they have to hide out in a Florida retirement community with ninja assassins hot on their trail."
.....
*William Rohde just may restart the 84-year-old Andy Griffith's career with
Matlock: Locked and Loaded: "The loss of his first case sends mild-mannered defense attorney Matlock over the edge, where his gentle southern demeanor gives way to the Vietnam-era CIA assassin he thought he'd left behind forever, and where his only solace can be found in explosive, high-octane revenge against the crooked jury who tarnished his perfect record."
*Steve Forsberg, noting that
District 9 proved there is "a demographic attracted to movies that deal with illegal immigration in a sci-fi context," repurposes
Mork & Mindy as a feature-length drama, with "Mindy as a conflicted ICE agent harboring the undocumented Ork citizen Mork in her Denver home, with alien sex scenes as appropriate for the PG-13 crowd. "
*Sometimes, a title and a director is all that's needed to conjure a whole movie: "Rob Marshall brings
Cop Rock to the big screen!" gushed Neil Quarterman, while J. Lutz evoked a far grittier police procedural in just four words: "Quentin Tarantino's
Barney Miller."
I'm going to award first place to Deanna Tolliver's pitch for not only cleverly recasting an '80s sitcom according to the new rules of Hollywood, but nailing the solemnly bogus language of the remake-trailer voiceover: "A tragic accident. A friend's promise. A new life. This summer, the world moves to the beat of just one drum. Willow Smith. Jaden Smith. Brad Pitt.
Diff'rent Strokes: The world's about to get moved."