In America, our movies are in English, damn it!

Love movies? Hate reading? Good news! ‘Let the Right One In’ is Sweden’s latest cinematic… Love movies? Hate reading? Good news! ‘Let the Right One In’ is Sweden’s latest cinematic export, and the buzz for the upcoming American release is building fast. I think it’s about vampires or something. I can’t tell, because the trailer is in Swedish with English subtitles. What the hell? Maybe nobody told Magnet Releasing, the U.S. distribution company, but this is America. If I wanted to read, I’d pick up a book ‘mdash; like, I don’t know, the one this movie is based on. Isn’t the point of movies freeing people like me from the tyranny of the written word? I refuse to even read the opening credits, which is why I always take a date that will read them aloud for me. Thankfully, Hollywood has a plan. It’s going to remake the movie for American audiences ‘mdash; presumably with more explosions and boobies. See, Hollywood knows how things work. So what if the original movie hasn’t even been released here yet? It’s going to suck, obviously, so there’s no point in wasting time before making it again and making it better. Maybe the producers could fast-track the movie so that it comes out at the same time as the original ‘mdash; there’s no reason a bunch of IKEA lovers and word readers should get to see the movie before Joe Six-pack Americans like me. Or illiterates. What’s even better is that ‘Cloverfield’ director Matt Reeves is slated to helm the Englishified version. Some foreign film elitists worry that he won’t be able to channel the subtle tones of the source material, but I have nothing but faith in any filmmaker who blows up the goth chick from ‘Mean Girls’ on camera. The point is, American filmmaking is taking a step in the right direction by remaking this movie. History just goes to prove that Americans won’t tolerate reading in the cinema. ‘The Passion of the Christ?’ Box office bomb. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth?’ Critical disaster! Foreign language films have ‘failure’ written all over them ‘mdash; all over the bottom of the screen, in blocky yellow letters. ‘ Unfortunately, ‘Let the Right One In’ director Tomas Alfredson doesn’t seem to understand the average American filmgoer. ‘I’m very proud of my movie and think it’s great,’ he told Swedish film Web site Moviezine. ‘If you’d spent years on painting a picture, you’d hate to hear buzz about a copy even before your vernissage!’ ‘ ‘Vernissage?’ That’s your problem right there, buddy. You think you can march in here with your fancy foreign words and your critically acclaimed film and just make people want to see your version of things instead of one that’s marginally based on it with the same title and a bigger budget. Let me know when Michael Bay makes a louder, cooler version of anything else you might have to say ‘mdash; maybe then it will hold my interest. Having your movie remade for English-speaking-but-not-English-reading audiences is an honor, and I hope you remember that when Matt Reeves is sleeping on piles of American dollars that your movie didn’t make. Just think, somebody saw your movie and thought, ‘Hey, that was so great, I wish I had made it ‘mdash; Ah hell, I’ll do it anyway!’ Maybe you’ll learn from this and not make any more movies in your silly dead language ‘mdash; then you might get a little more credit. Personally, I’m glad that Hollywood is already remaking a movie that isn’t even out yet. Hopefully in the future, they won’t even wait this long, and different countries can all just shoot different versions of the same movie for themselves simultaneously. Except that ours will always be better. Because ours will be in English.