There are two ways to look at a remake underway of "About Last Night." One is to ask the question: why in name of everything decent and good did anyone think that the world needs another remake of a lousy movie. The other way of looking at plans to remake "About Last Night" answers that question: only lousy movies should ever be remade. When it comes to plans to remake "About Last Night" there is an extra added dimension that needs to be taken into consideration.
This time around the story of sexual perversity in Chicago is about black people.
They tried the same thing with "The Honeymooners" which tried to transplant the humor of the beloved Jackie Gleason television series into the world of African-American urban humor. The problem there is that once you remove the chemistry of Jackie Gleason and the cast, "The Honeymooners" is really just about a semi-abusive relationship and is not that funny.
There was also an all-black television remake of "The Odd Couple." The problem there was that you basically just kept the same characters and reflected little if any cultural difference.
Remaking "About Last Night" hardly seems the most ideal choice as a means of telling an already known story from a different ethnic perspective. Perhaps the rights were just cheaper than going for something a big more drastic. After all, the original story, based on a play with a title that could not easily be seen on cinema marquees in the 1980s but that would hardly raise an eyebrow today, offers almost nothing new or insightful in the world of relationships. The only reason that "About Last Night" made any kind of impression on the consciousness of easily duped movieogoers of the 1980s was its Brat Pack cast. Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and the rest were, for reason that remain inexplicable, hot commodities when the film came out.
The cast of the remake does not appear to be what you might call a Black Brat Pack. Which means they better do something that was not done with the original.
Make a great movie.
