Movies I'd Like to Rewrite

If I were the screenwriter on several movies I would change a few things. Have you ever sat and watched a movie and either instantly or days later thought I could have made that better? Well I have and I’d like to take the opportunity here to try and fix some movies that need a little help. I am going to reveal plot points of The Hangover 2, Scream 4, The Proposal and Funny People so if you haven’t seen them and plan to, maybe it's best to go watch them and then read this.

THE HANGOVER PART TWO

Let’s start with The Hangover Part Two (2011) because it needs the most work. The Hangover, the first, was really good. It was funny, clever, and unexpected. The original built in a mystery of What happened to these guys last night? and Where is Doug? amidst a raunchy comedy. The audience enjoyed this mixing of genres and how were we rewarded in the sequel? With the exact same plot. Of course the scenario of the second film would require another member of the wolf pack to get married and thus there would need to be a bachelor party. Shenanigans would occur and maybe the guys would even wake up the next morning again not remembering what occurred thus requiring them to retrace their steps. Fine, but the similarities should have stopped there. Once again the guys (Stu, Allen and Phil) wake up in a hotel with no idea what happened the night before. Again the character of Doug is largely missing from the movie. There was hope of something different; Stu is getting married this time around and his fiancée’s little brother, the meek Ivy League student, is tagging along on the bachelor party. But he takes the role of the missing Doug from the first and is hardly in the movie.

Speaking of Doug, it would have changed things up from the first one to have Doug in on the excitement, it seemed the filmmakers wanted to capitalize on the interactions between Stu and Phil with Allen. Maybe they were worried Doug would mess up the dynamic so he skips out early in the night. But I think having him in it would have added something extra, something different from the first movie. Second I think Teddy the younger brother could have been better utilized. Why not introduce his character as a well-behaved, straight-laced student and then have it been him that caused all the trouble? It would have been interesting to have the guys think they corrupted him with their wild night. But in the end reveal that Teddy was the bad influence on them, getting them into more trouble than if he hadn’t been around. I can only hope the writers are a little more creative with part three.

SCREAM 4

I really like the Scream series, it may not be a critic’s darling but I enjoy the scare mixed with humor, and all the while poking fun at the entire horror genre. I liked the most recent one, Scream Four (2011), my major complaint- it should have ended about ten minutes earlier than it did. In this case I don’t want to rewrite anything; I just want to edit out the final scene. I won’t give away who the killer was because I can make my point without revealing the person. But I will say in the three previous movies, good always triumphs over evil. In the end, the killer is revealed and taken down. So why not change it up for the fourth movie? Why not let it end with a question mark, an uncertainty about whether good prevails evil? The worst part of it was I felt like that was where the film was going when I saw it. I was expecting a fade out and the credits to roll and I thought it was a great way to end it. But then it seemed the screenwriters got cold feet and threw in a good over evil smack down in the end. I think for once in the franchise, letting the killer get away with it- at least temporarily- would have been a cool twist and would have opened the door for another sequel even more so than how they did end it. Scream 4 makes me almost as mad as The Hangover Part Two, because it is more frustrating for a movie to require only a minor edit, compared to a full script overhaul. All they had to do was take out the final scene and it would have made the movie so much better. I left the theater so frustrated because it had the potential to be a solid ending and it wimped out.

THE PROPOSAL

The Proposal (2009) - my rant on this one is short- Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock shouldn’t have ended up together at the end. Just because it’s a romantic comedy doesn’t mean the couple always has to end up together.The pair work together and strongly dislike each other at the beginning of the movie. I was understanding that over the course of the movie the two grew to like each other, as they got to know one another on a personal level. It made sense that once they understood why the other acted the way they did, it shed their professional hatred for the other. However it still didn’t make any sense to me that they fell in love. The ending discredits the entire movie to me.

FUNNY PEOPLE

Another movie I’d like to tweak a bit is Funny People (2009), the Judd Apatow film starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen. Specifically I would like to edit it. Overall this was a good movie, it gave Sandler a chance to stretch a little, sure he plays a comedian but he is struggling with cancer and the realizations that he has no close support system. In this way Sandler got to show emotions we don’t (genuinely) see in the likes of The Waterboy and Happy Gilmore. There is one part of this movie, and I know I am not alone in this thought, that needed to be edited. There is a good chunk of time spent with George and Ira (Sandler and Rogen) characters going to George’s ex’s house and spending time with her and her daughters (played by Apatow’s real-life family). It just goes on and on and Apatow defended it and kept it in, making the movie two hours and twenty minutes. It’s an important component to the overall story, I’m not suggesting it be taken out totally but just slimmed down a bit.

So if I was a screenwriter, and I guess a time-traveler, I would travel back in time and change these movies. I’d completely make-over the plot of The Hangover Part Two, take out the final scene of Scream 4, change the end of The Proposal, and trim down Funny People. I would probably change some others as well but these are the few that come to my mind first. What about you, what movies would you rewrite if you could?