A little game I play while watching very bad movies is imagining the joy I will have during the later conversation that I will have about it with John Wilson, Founder and Head Berry of the Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation during our annual interview. The Razzies, as their award is known, even has a special category for beknighted remakes like FIRESTARTER, lumping them in with equally awful rip-offs and sequels. Wilson is a sharp-witted man with decades of experience in both film publicity and calling out bad films, and if there is not at least one reference to crispy fried something by him when we talk about FIRESTARTER, and we will, I will be very disappointed.
Yet, not as disappointed as I was with this reworking of the Stephen King story of a little girl who blow-torches people and small animals that annoy her. It is a moribund thing, edged with the irony of its being so very inert while telling a story rife with psychokinesis. It’s as though director Keith Thomas, who showed real brilliance with THE VIGIL, didn’t want to startle the audience with any sudden moves, even during life-and-death escapes or combusting a passel of agents from a shadowy government organization. No, we might as well be watching a flotilla gradually float into port for all the visual excitement on offer here, and with far less pageantry.
The premise is that Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) was born with special powers, much to the consternation of her loving parents Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon). They blame themselves for her condition, what with having participated in an experiment back in college in which that ci-mentioned shadowy government agency injected them with Lot G. One is never informed of what the actual intent was, but the result was that Andy and Vicky developed their own special powers, and once Charlie was born just a tad too warm, that agency wanted her all for itself. Hence the little family has been on the run for all of Charlie’s life, fearing that they will be discovered and gently arguing about the best way to help Charlie integrate her ability to combust things when she’s peeved into a healthy, well-rounded life. Of course, Charlie gives them away after being taunted in school for being weirdo and then calling 911 later when mom goes up in flames. Of course, the mystically tattooed assassin (Michael Greyeyes) sent to kill the parents and deliver Charlie to his employers fails. Of course, there is the interlude where the dotty inventor of Lot G (Kurtwood Smith) explains exactly why his experiment was so wrong to the high-heeled officer (Gloria Reuben) in charge of bringing Charlie in.
Armstrong does a fine job as the conflicted and troubled Charlie, even if she if asked to replicate Drew Barrymore’s iconic scream when surrounded by the same sort of flames and wind effects used in the 1984 incarnation. She may be a little girl with a deadly gift, but she is always that little girl unburdened by precocious emotions or insights. Efron, too, has his moments as the concerned father on the lam, even if he does seem to get over Vicky’s demise very quickly. Perhaps it’s the adrenalin fueling their escape coupled with shock of having Vicky tumble dead from one of the family’s closets while the assassin has a knife to Charlie’s throat. Even so, they are undone, alas, by bad pacing and cliched situations.
FIRESTARTER wants to be both a touching family drama and a hair-raising excursion into dark fantasy. It fails on both scores, besmirching not only its source material, but also the 1984 rendering. If you can’t improve, or at least give new insight, on the original, just leave it alone.
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