The Hollywood Dream Factory now doubles as a recycling center.
Sequels. Prequels. Remakes. Reboots. Re-imaginings. You get the drill.
Yet one movie is begging to be remade, or at least updated, but there's no sign of it happening 30-odd years later. That film is 1994's "PCU," a prescient campus comedy about the creeping political correctness invading the American university starring Jeremy Piven and David Spade.
The film flopped in theaters and missed much of its comic potential. It still delivered some big laughs and proved well ahead of its time. That titular P.C. groupthink slowly morphed into woke madness, giving Hollywood the ultimate chance for a do-over.
So far, nothing.
The best we have, perhaps, is HBO Max's "Rooster."
The comedy series stars Steve Carell as Greg "Rooster" Russo, an author who takes a gig at a New England college to be closer to his adult daughter (Charly Clive). The setting is ripe for satircial swipes at campus living, from speech codes to trigger warning madness.
And, occasionally, the show goes there. One episode found Greg getting called before his peers for his comical microaggressions. Plus, some of Greg's students are fluent in WokeSpeak, and his status as a privileged white male comes up a time or two.
It's the closest the HBO Max series has come to full-on university satire, and the gags practically write themselves. There's just not enough of them.
We do get some scraps, though and the masterful Carell makes the most of these comic morsels. Yet "Rooster" isn't committed to the bit. It's a shame the film's creative team, including TV veteran Bill Lawrence of "Scrubs" fame, didn't screen "No Safe Spaces" before assembling his writers' room.
That 2019 documentary didn't grab the culture's attention like it should have. It tried to warn us what was coming to a town near you, namely hordes of far-Left zealots demanding we watch what we say and think.
We failed to heed said warning. We all know what happened next. Except Hollywood won't go near the topic. "Saturday Night Live" stood down as Hamas-loving college students ransacked schools across the country. Late-night hosts looked the other way as conservatives got chased off of college campuses for having the "wrong" reviews.
If Hollywood can't update "PCU," could a studio at least attempt a similar, R-rated comedy? Apparently not.
As is, "Rooster" feels confused despite its modest pleasures. It's a tight, professional comedy that's still looking for its purpose. Is Carell's character, still smarting after a painful divorce, seeking a second chance at happiness? Is his daughter, a professor at the college, the true north of the story?
Why can't "Rooster" dig deeper into college's myriad culture war issues? The potential material is endless, and perhaps the show could take a side against woke toxicity.
We can dream.
You can't blame the cast, including rising star Danielle Deadwyler, John C. McGinley and Alan Ruck. The fault lies in a Hollywood ecosystem that can't see past its culture war blinders. There's a great college comedy itching to be made, and "Rooster" only scratches that surface.
