Bringing the after-school special, um, back to school? Rather than portraying the serious artistic aspirations it's supposedly espousing, Fame panders to a target market of kids who think performing arts means Top40 music videos. Behind the most milquetoast leading couple you can imagine, there's a carefully plotted, insidious version of "diversity". Somehow director Tancharoen fails to even get the performances to hit, and tries to hide behind quick cuts and slo-mo, complete with big wooshes.

Meh - kinda boring with boring characters and boring....well, everything else actually.

"Like its gifted if excitable protagonists, Fame would have done well to stay in the classroom a bit more, rather than trolling the New York streets." - Matthew Connolly

Awful movie. Absolutely no plot. Too much jumping around. Had no time to connect with any of the characters. Shallow. Most of the story lines introduced were just forgotten.

Well.. so it has no plot, I still enjoyed the dancing and the singing

The actors are required to play out a script riddled with stuffy cliches aimed at a hip teen audience that's way too smart for this type of outdated, soapy mush. The original R-rated account of the pain behind achieving dreams is now a watered-down, PG-rated knock-off of "High School Musical."

Um. Characterization was lacking. Full of cliches. Was way too thin in the big areas. Only positives really were that the acts provided some entertainment and Kherington Payne is really really hot.

As a movie it isn't much, but it has a great amount of talent on display. And Kherington Payne is amazingly hot. I agree with the words of jazz_learner : 'The performances were good, but there was no storyline. It seems as though Fame was a movie that was full of extras, only to zoom in and pay attention to a handful of them"

Fame is too busy choreographing compelling dance numbers with an off-putting abuse of close-ups to bother telling much of a story. The characters are also incredibly archetypal, which is ironic given that the film puts such a strong emphasis on being an individual. Fame also highlights tough issues but undermines this presentation with comically convenient solutions. While it fails to tell a story, it does contain a number of amazing and enjoyable musical numbers.

entertaining but unbelievable in that the students never appear to practice or sweat but, instead, remain static and then graduate

The performances were good, but there was no storyline. It seems as though Fame was a movie that was full of extras, only to zoom in and pay attention to a handful of them.

The story was ok for me, just not very engaging. The song and dance was excellent except for straining to make the solo ballads something more than just a break in the action. The best routine came at the first of the movie in the cafeteria scene, sort of making everything else anti-climactic.

Once again you guys baffle me with exceptionally low scores for slightly-over-average movies. The story is a mess, the characters are background people randomly pulled to the front and they only work in 2 or 3 cases. Payne for instance, doesn't even have a role and manages to have a lot of dialog without ever saying anything. All film-errors put aside, the amount of talent on display here is too much to ignore and too much for me not to enjoy. An OK flick, but damn they messed a lot of stuff up.

Could not make myself watch it till the end. Dull singing, stupid dancing... and almost no plot at all! Extended dance edition includes 3 dancing performances (wtf!) You will not care what happens to the characters, but donīt worry, there is not much that could happen to them...

Someone should have told Kevin Tancharoen that this isn't a giant music video he is making.