Any announcement of a Hollywood remake of an older film is sure to elicit a good deal of groaning and trolling, but given the fact that the Hollywood studios keep going back to their own well for inspiration (often with quite a bit of box office success) it seems clear that the practice makes sense. This practice has not, can not, and will not apply to Patrick Swayze movies. Period. (See: Red Dawn starring Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson.)
It seems MGM didn’t get the memo because they are reportedly committed to remaking the Patrick Swayziest of Patrick Swayze films, the cult favorite action flick Road House. According to The Wrap the reboot will be directed by Rob Cohen, who launched The Fast and the Furious franchise and directed other big budget action films such as xXx and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
I seriously can’t count the number of times I have been flipping through cable channels and have not been able to turn away when Road House is on. There are other movies that have a similar effect on me (Die Hard, Office Space, The Hunt For Red October) (yeah, I’m a dude), but all of those movie are actually pretty great, well-made movies. Though clearly not a great movie, Road House is an amazingly perfect and addictive mixture of violence, clear-cut morality and low-budget campiness that only works because Patrick Swayze pulls it off. If you bring in some slick Hollywood director, a huge budget and some action star like Vin Diesel (who director Rob Cohen has worked with on more than one occasion already) then what’s the point of a remake when you’ve already lost the special quality that made Road House a cult classic in the first place?!?
I just wish movie projects could be traded like stocks because I would dump my entire IRA into selling the Road House remake short. Actually, I might start by selling the planned remake of Swayze’s Dirty Dancing short. (By the way, the Dirty Dancing movie release date continue to get pushed back because I am assuming the movie company is realizing the male lead has to be manly and dancerly at the same time — or in other words, the male lead has to be Patrick Swayze.) After tripling my money on that, I should have just enough time to bank on the failure of the Point Break remake (Yes, I have whiplash from SMDH) before putting it all back into investing in the assured failure of Road House: (insert dumb tagline here).
Something tells me none of these remakes will have the awesomeness it takes to inspire a Family Guy meme:
In summary, let me jut say that “Nobody backs Baby in a corner,” and nobody pulls off a Patrick Swayze remake. Here’s the original Road House trailer as a reminder:
And just in case that wasn’t enough, here’s Patrick alongside Kelly Lynch reciting perhaps the greatest terrible line of all time:
“Pain don’t hurt.”
No, but the idea of a Road House remake sure does.
