I thought I would put together a short piece on a movie remake, and maybe sometime soon put together another comparison of another pair of remakes.
Somewhere a few years back we picked up That Darn Cat! on sale on DVD. It was a two-disk set:the 1965 Haley Mills version and the 1997 Christina Ricci version. At the time I really didn’t appreciate the remake — the classic is classic after all — but last night I watched both movies again. The original is still the better by a long shot, but I found more moments to appreciate than I had previously.
The 1965 version also stars Dean Jones of Herbie movie fame as well, with cameos by Ed Wynn and several other good character actors of the period.
In watching both movies, Betsy commented that the original was more believable than the remake — and that the original isn’t really that realistic when you get down to it. But the way the original deals with the suspensions of realism is more sympathetic to the characters of the world of the movie. The remake is more slapstick, sarcastic, and mocking of the people in the idyllic town that the main character cannot stand.
My other observation is that the original is longer, by quite a bit, yet feels shorter.
Nathan observed that the remake tried to bring the movie into the modern era of its time by doing things to make the cat and the main characters seem “cool”, which I note has the effect of making the newer movie feel more dated than the original. Somehow the drive-in movie theater of the original has a less dated feel than the ice cream shop and town square with gazebos atmosphere of the town in the remake.
So, overall, I prefer the original of this movie.
At The Rainbow 