.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Here is my interpretation of what occurred in a conversation between Michael Bay (MB), two studio executives (Mr. X and Mr. Y) while trying to determine their next project:

Mr. X: With last years Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake doing so handsomely at the box office, what do you say we update another horror classic and see if we can milk the movie watching crowd again this year?

Mr. Y: Great idea. So let's stay away from remakes of Asian horror films like The Ring, Dark Water, Ju-on. These stories are too complicated and I wasn't able to figure out what was going on half the time. Let's try The Amityville Horror, I always had a crush of Margot Kidder and it's been my dream to redo anything she has been in - not including the mental institutions, of course.

MB: Fantastic, maybe I can get Will Smith and Bruce Willis to star and blow things up real good!

Mr. X: Nah.we were thinking of things on a smaller scale. How about we just budget this thing for like $18 million. We won't put a lot of effort into it and we won't screen it for the critics in order to recoup our money on the opening week-end before everyone gets on to us.

MB: Ok, but let's get a good writer. Someone like Randall Wallace that wrote Pearl Harbor for me, or Marianne Wibberly who wrote Bad Boys II.

Mr. X: Why spend the money? Let's get Scott Kosar who wrote The Texas Chainsaw Massacre re-make. He still owes us for throwing that tantrum when we decided to make things up when we went along.

Mr. Y: Now let's talk director.

MB: Let me do it. If you let me produce, I will agree to only take $15 million and we can use the final $3 million to create a big meteor that hits the house at the end and blows all of Long Island away!

Mr. X: Ahhhh, no. But we will let you have a producers credit cause people do seem to spend a lot of money seeing your crap.

Mr. Y: What about Andrew Douglas for director?

MB, Mr. X: WHO?

Mr. Y: Andrew Douglas. He painted my house last year and said he was interested in directing. Besides, I hear he directed some film called Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, so he probably can handle himself behind a camera. And it might only cost us a few hundred to acquire his services!

MB, Mr. X: Perfect!

Mr. X: Now let's talk stars, what do you guys think of Ryan Reynolds to take over the role made infamous by Charles Brolin in the original? He is trying to reinvent himself from his earlier National Lampoon type flicks like Van Wilder with films like Blade: Trinity and considering that that movie flopped and that he is Canadian, I bet you we can get him for nothing more than a box of Timbits.

MB, Mr. Y: We are on a roll!

Mr. X: Now we just have to work on the look of the film. What do we want to incorporate from the first one that worked so well?

MB: Well, I always liked that in the first Amityville the blood looked like black ink. We should do that again. Just this time let's have buckets and buckets of the stuff and let's add a special compound and have Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage appear to try and stop the oozing before terrorists get their hands on it and try to blow up Alcatraz.

Mr. X: Not exactly what I was thinking about MB. But I do like the buckets and buckets of blood idea.

Mr. Y: And do we have rights to the musical score of the original that went on to win an Academy Award?

MB: No problem. I can get the rights. And let's think about getting Hans Zimmer to add more of a ghetto beat to it.

Mr. X: And the flies. Remember the scene where the priest gets swarmed by the flies. We should do that again, just this time have more flies that leave the priest in a disgusting shape.

MB: Can the flies have lasers?

Mr. X, Mr. Y: Shut up!

Mr. X: So I think we have it! Let's just up the gore, up the ghosts, up the humor, up the spooks and up scares and we are done.

Mr. Y: Yes, let's up everything. Except for the running time. Let's decrease this to like less than 90 minutes so that we can fit in as many showings as possible in the opening week-end before people catch on.

MB: Yeah, and maybe when we show the film, we can include the trailer to my soon-to-be-released $100 million The Island!

Mr. X, Mr. Y: Whatever.