Charade vs. Charlie

A few weeks back I’m looking around on NetFlix to see if the movie “Charade” (1963) is available to rent on DVD. Turns out it is.

Strangely, it’s available on the flipside of the DVD movie “The Truth About Charlie” (2002). It’s only then that I realize that Charlie is a remake of Charade.

So I order the flip-disc figuring I’ll watch them both and compare.

For those who haven’t seen it “Charade” stars Audrey Hepburn as Reggie, a woman who returns home from holiday, determined to divorce her husband Charlie, only to learn that Charlie has been murdered and a cast of rogues now circles her waters sniffing around for some unknown bankroll they believe her to be in possession of. Cary Grant seems to be the most trustworthy of these shady characters, but with a title like “Charade”, who can be sure?

Although it’s sometimes mistaken for a Hitchcock thriller “Charade” was actually directed by Stanley Donen. It’s a romantic thriller with comedic touches. Or perhaps it’s a romantic comedy with the trappings of a thriller. I’m never sure, but the charm of the movie is that it works as romance, comedy and thriller by turns.

Which brings us to “The Truth About Charlie”. This 2002 update features Thandie Newton in Hepburn’s role and Mark Wahlberg standing in for Grant. Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”, “Philadelphia”) directs, and I figure, how bad can it be?

Well, sadly “Charlie” misfires pretty badly. Although at times the story hews pretty close to the original, the devil is in the differences.

The strangest decision that Demme made was to de-fang all the film’s bad guys. The original sports a tangled web of dubious relationships and shifting alliances that eventually degrades into a murder plot. Like poor Reggie, we’re left wondering who, if anyone, can be trusted and which of these characters is desperate enough to start killing off the competition. By the end, even the dashing Grant is suspect.

In Demme’s version, none of the characters seems particularly threatening. Indeed, at one point they all start cooperating with each other until finally the story introduces a new character, Charlie’s MOTHER, who then becomes the heavy in the movie. I kid you not.

The tango scene in “Charlie” is extremely perplexing, with Reggie dancing around with all her antagonists. But as I said, they’re not really antagonizing. At one point femme fatale Lisa Gay Hamilton (replacing Ned Glass) even proclaims, “I like you, Reggie!”

This seems to be an attempt to transplant the orange-game scene from the original, but again, the effect was the complete opposite. In “Charlie” the tango scene is some kind of wierd truce between the parties and it occurs late in the movie. In “Charade” the orange scene is filled with menace and threats and arrives earlier in the film, forcing poor Reggie to bump up against the sharks for the first time.

Of course, another big discrepancy is that Wahlberg is no Cary Grant. While it seems like “Charlie” is sometimes reaching for the quirky, genre-defying sensibilities that made “Charade” so enjoyable, it just can’t seem to get there. It’s hard to estimate how much of what worked about “Charade” was due Grant’s charm, but his ability to pull off the romantic and humor bits went a long way. Still, I can’t imagine any leading man pulling off the “wash-and-wear” gag from the original.

One innovation that worked well in the new version is that Reggie has a greater role in bringing the money grab to a close. In 1963 it may have been OK for Hepburn to simply be a damsel in distress, but the thoroughly modern Reggie actually gets to have a hand in thwarting the bad guy.

In the end “Charade” remains a highly recommended movie. The truth about the updated “Charlie” is that you needn’t bother with it.