As for ROMANCING THE STONE,

I like the movie. It's a sappy sweet sugary love story. Again like CHARADE in my comment above, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner have a chemistry that makes watching them bicker and fuss and slowly fall in love fun to see. Danny DeVito, the Stone and that crocodile all help.

It's just a fun movie.

They did a sequel called "JEWEL OF THE NILE" that was OK. it entertained and made the viewer feel good.

These movies only work because the principle actors have that onscreen chemistry that makes it fun.

SO a remake is going to depend on the main characters having that same chemistry.

Chances are against it.

It's all about risk reduction. The businesses that make movies want sure-fire products, or as close to it as they can get. That's why so many movies have formulaic plots and why so many old movies are remade. There are no artistic considerations. The thought is "it worked once, so why not twice."

Hollywood's perennial problem is that it's a business whose product is art. Art is an unavoidably unsure thing whose success depends on accident or inspiration as much as anything. But businesses want reliable, predictable products - one iPad the same as the next - that let them control their costs and anticipate their sales. So they try to make movies which conform to known patterns which worked in the past, remakes the best example.

But it usually turns out that what they thought were the keys to an old movie's success were not it at all, and the remakes have nothing of what audiences loved about the original. So the studios turn out one banal film after another and then concoct theories to explain why box office has been declining for years. The most obvious explanation - they make bad movies - is the last to occur to them.

Good art, including good commercial art, requires taking chances. The studios used to do that. But then production costs went up. Taking risks with a $2M film is not the same as taking risks with a $200M film. With so much on the line, they try to play safe.

Production costs went up so high because Hollywood thinks it can compete with TV and other entertainments only by offering spectacle. Those computer-effects extravaganzas are expensive. Movies used to rely on sympathetic characters in gripping plots - the basics of story-telling. In my opinion, that's what movies still need to succeed. No special effects will counter bland characters in a muddled story. All the movies I love are good stories before anything. If a good story appears in a spectacular setting, so much the better, but spectacle without story is boring.

I think that's why we are where we are.

A good example is the 1990 Schwarzenneger film "Total Recall." The original was a lot of fun. It had strong identifiable characters in an engaging plot, laced with a quirky imagination, wit, and originality. It was one of the better films of 1990. Last year's remake had virtually no characters at all. There were actors with names, but they had no personalities, and the plot was perfunctory. Most of the movie consisted of chases. The "characters" whizzed about in a perpetual steeplechase which was supposed to be exciting but was the opposite. When the chases stopped, the movie was over. Utterly forgettable. But the remake obviously cost a large fortune to make, and the producers hoped all that whizzing would make characters and a plot unnecessary. Global distribution may have saved the film financially, but not artistically.

Though it was a year or two after the 80's, I can see a remake of the Crying Game, with Justin Bieber in the Jaye Davidson role. Just have to figure who to cast in the Stephen Rea role. Adam Sandler perhaps? Of course it would end up a comedy with lots of fart jokes to update it for the times. (sarcasm alert)

Transward

PLease don't remake WEIRD SCIENCE... I still have impure thoughts about Kelly LeBrock...

Don't remake it like this:

http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/weird-s ... universal/

This film will attempt to carve out its own identity by being redrawn as an edgier R-rated comedy in line with 21 Jump Street and The Hangover.

...says THIS piece over at Deadline.