Quite why anyone decided to make another film based on Christopher Gore and Alan Parker’s exhilarating 1980 success is beyond understanding.

But it is still intriguing to see a group of unknown showbiz hopefuls playing unknown showbiz hopefuls at the New York High School of Performing Arts.

We’ll know in another few years who has succeeded, and it could be the very performers regretfully told they may not make it in the film. There are some bright youngsters spitting out some less than sparkling lines as they learn from veterans like Charles Dutton and Kelsey Grammer that celebrity doesn’t come all that easy, even nowadays.

The trouble is that apart from the first few sequences, and the usual end-of-term show (which, of course, has the audience of proud parents contributing a standing ovation), there is little to suggest the hard work everyone has to go through to succeed.

Instead, we have endless permutations of the personal lives of the participants. There’s Naturi Naughton as a pianist who suddenly bursts into song in the middle of classical practice and tries to persuade her father that she prefers pop to Beethoven (lucky Beethoven!).

There’s Collins Pennie as an actor who decides rapping is more like it as a career. And there’s Megan Mullally as a vocal instructor at the academy who vaguely regrets she left a singing career behind her and wows them all at a disco.

Elaborate dance routines and six new songs festoon the proceedings but you can’t help feeling that these young people are less interesting in their personal lives than as latent showbiz talent, and that director Kevin Tancharoen, making his feature debut, isn’t as good as Parker at swamping the clichés with camerawork and editing that douses them down
a bit.