The Week in Film: A defanged "Fame," a snubbed Pedro and the latest trailers

After watching the "gay exorcism" kid on Tyra, aren't you ready to turn off the TV and see what's going on at the movies?

The week's big opener is, of course, the remake of Fame, featuring a cast of talented youngsters that's way more shiny, happy and generally well-scrubbed than their grittier 1980 counterparts.

That would be OK if this new movie were a tenth as engaging or well-written as the first one, but alas, it ain't. Even the few standout musical numbers aren't rousing enough to put over the rest of this lead balloon.

That we've gone from the New York City High School of Performing Arts apparently having but one gay student (yeah, right) in '80 to one exceedingly gay-vague dancer boy doesn't feel like all that much progress, either.

And how can you put Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth, the artists formerly known as Frasier and Lilith Crane, in the same movie without giving them a scene together? Blasphemy!

Also gracing screens is Surrogates, a sci-fi thriller that didn't seem too promising but which wound up being lots of fun. Bruce Willis is an FBI agent in a future that has everyone staying at home and living their life through synthetic "surrogates," who go out in the world and interact with everyone else's avatar.

Someone figures out a way to kill not only a surrogate but its human controller, and thus the chasing and the whodunit-ing begins. It's dopey fun.

While Surrogates turned out to be a pleasant surprise, Coco Before Chanel is rather a disappointment. Audrey Tautou stars in this biopic about the early years of this legendary designer, but you'd never guess you were watching a movie about arguably one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

Anne Fontaine's dull drama focuses on Chanel's rich boyfriends, with a minimum of sewing or design. At least the trashy Chanel Solitaire owned its lurid ridiculousness, but this stately bore reveals little about its fascinating subject.

Opening in very limited release is Michael Moore's latest, Capitalism: A Love Story. He's taking on a pretty big subject, and it winds up exceeding his grasp. Still, if you're a Moore fan, you'll find plenty here to amuse and enrage you about the behavior of soulless corporations. (If you don't already know what the phrase "Dead Peasants" means, prepare to blow a gasket.)

Movies opening this weekend include the wide-release horror flick Pandorum and limited openings for the spooky and much-buzzed about Paranormal Activity as well as the directorial debut of The Office and Away We Go star John Krasinski, a screen adaptation of the late David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

Los Trailers

Here's an early look at the gay-inclusive rom-com Valentine's Day, an ensemble piece that apparently hopes to do for the February holiday what Love Actually did for Christmas:

Is it just me, or is John Travolta never convincing as a bad-ass? Perhaps From Paris with Love, which teams him with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, will convince me otherwise:

Now that Jackie Chan and Jet Li are getting a little old for the martial-arts heavy lifting, thank goodness for Tony Jaa, who's about to return to U.S. screens with Ong Bak 2:

Halloween's a-coming, and so are the fright flicks, so buckle up the kids and check out House of the Devil:

It opened in the U.K. last year, but American audiences are finally about to get a look at St. Trinian's, a remake of a classic British comedy about a school for larcenous girls. Rupert Everett dons drag as the headmistress; need I say more?