Dear Hollywood Filmmakers,

Sorry it’s too late to ask that no one consider remaking the 1949 Best Picture Oscar winner, All the King’s Men, but I hope I’m still in time to make a similar request for a few other great films. I decided to write this letter while the lethargic, ponderous, incoherent and fuzzy-looking 2006 version of Robert Penn Warren’s novel is fresh in my mind.  

Although the earlier movie won three Oscars -- Best Picture, Best Actor (Broderick Crawford) and Best Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge), this remake should come up short during the upcoming awards season. Sean Penn, who plays flamboyant Louisiana governor Willie Stark, looks -- in some scenes -- like he’s wearing a black floor mop on top of his real, much lighter, locks. That’s very distracting, of course, but not as off-putting as his constant flailing of arms when YELLING out speeches in an unintelligible Southern drawl. 

Jude Law, so charismatic in other movies like Cold Mountain and Alfie, almost fades into the woodwork as a journalist who admires Stark when he first starts out, then later comes to work for him, and ends up with an assignment to dig up dirt on Judge Irwin, played by Anthony Hopkins, the man who practically raised him.

Also, unfortunately, Kate Winslet, as Jude Law’s love interest, just seems listless most of the time. And James Gandolfini, portraying a crooked politician, lacks the intensity he always brings to The Sopranos. In fact, there’s no energy in this entire remake. It left me wondering why the project was given a green light in the first place -- which brings me back to my initial request.    

Please, I beg of you, don’t consider remaking the following films:

Vertigo

Singin’ in the Rain

Citizen Kane

Gone with the Wind

Fargo

Night of the Hunter

Gilda

To Kill a Mockingbird

Days of Wine and Roses

Blade Runner

Thank you, in advance, for your cooperation.

Betty Jo Tucker

(Poster: 1949 All the King's Men, released by Columbia Pictures.)