10/22
A group of entrepreneurial high school graduates band together to take down the rigged college admissions system. Remake of the Thai film Bad Genius (2017). At the beginning of the film, there is a scene showing Lynn calculating the cost of traveling to the private school she visited. The film showed a stack of public transit tickets clearly marked with the SEPTA logo, which stands for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. SEPTA operates in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Half a minute later the film identifies the city where Lynn and Dad live as Seattle. References Roots (1977). Bad Genius (2024) is a remake of the 2017 Thai film of the same name. It uses the original 2017 film as a recipe – down to the dialogue, the sets, the atmosphere, the ambitions of the characters, even the placement of the characters on set. It follows this recipe exactly, only slightly deviating towards the end and changing a few minor elements of the original plot. In some ways it becomes a bland, lazy and forced experience. To understand why, we need to talk a little about the original 2017 film and what made it so special. Bad Genius (2017) is a movie I loved so much that I’ve seen it more times than I’d like to admit; so yes, i’m biased. It has its flaws – sometimes it’s a little cheesy with the sound effects and direction choices – but it’s a successful and engaging heist film. It was a huge hit in its home country of Thailand and across Southeast Asia. However, it was what this film otherwise accomplished that drew me in so much. The original 2017 film took on the difficult tasks of writing smart characters and putting them in a test-taking atmosphere, which would otherwise be boring on film, while shooting it somehow incredibly tense. It took four fantastically cast leads who had little or no previous acting experience and made them stars. His production was outstanding, incorporating some great effects from the soundtrack to the on-screen text used to convey the message. Lynn was *smart*. She seemed like a really smart young woman with exceptional talents who had a loving father to care for; testaments to the original writers. Her relationships felt natural, and the supporting cast backed it up with their acting and chemistry. Her methods and schemes are shown through the film in a satisfying and enjoyable way. Her relationship with her father was emotional and well acted on both sides. The story had pace and purpose, but most importantly it had TENSION. And all of this was filmed and produced in a country that is probably not considered a center of cinema. Bad Genius (2024) has little or none of what it tries to copy. The remake somehow manages to take all the right ingredients – the lighting, the tense music, the same plot points, the same characters – and turn it into a sloppy rendition of what feels like a bad dubbing of the original. There are no big moments. There is no dearer. He has almost zero emotions. Lynn (2024) *acts* smart, but we don’t get the impression that the character is really a genius. The classroom scenes *seem* like they’re trying to convey suspense, but they just come across as mostly silly. The supporting cast is missing. It’s not tense at all. All we are left with in that good translation is a good father figure, thanks to the great Benedict Wong, and good acting from Callina Liang trying to give life to a bad performance. No reason to watch this. Watch the original if you haven’t (or if you just want to watch it again) and thank me later.