Live Poll: Best American Remake of a British Movie?

I can't disagree that the Americans don't have a strong record, but the reasons probably lie elsewhere than being an American remake or a British original. The subtlety loss and Americanization, I think this applies to other foreign adaptations, as well. Nowadays, I think a greater subsidy of the film and television industry by the British government, as well as, differences in actor training may be yield some more consistent qualitative advantages for British films. Americans have their own elite tiers of film-makers and actors. But, generally seem to be more focused on making more marketable and commercially successful films and lots of them. Otherwise, the comparisons may not be fair because the comparison is between different eras with most of the British originals coming from a period (1930-1970) when British film was a major player worldwide some fifty plus years ago.

Strong movies tend to get remade for every generation, so it isn't surprising that few happened to be American made given its dominance in the film making business and abundance of major studios. I find it more surprising that over the past century only twenty-five notable British-American remakes were made. It is an incredibly small number when you really think about it. So, much so that I think it indicates a lack of interest by American studios in remaking British films at all and makes it hard to draw any conclusions on such a small sample.

Also, I think more than a few of these are decent movies on their own and the film makers who remade should be proud of the end result. However, as a general rule remakes rarely exceed the original, making it less about the national origin. I doubt these remakes, if they were British made would have exceeded the end result of these American ones: Gaslight (1944), The Italian Job (2003), The Jackal (1997), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) and a few others.

I think it seems like more because they've butchered so many tv shows over the years as well, especially comedies. The American humour just isn't the same as the Brit's. The worst part of any American "comedy" is that bloody awful canned applause that they insist on. If jokes are funny, you don't need to cue the audience to laugh. To be fair, they do a better job of the movies than they do the tv shows, but with their production budgets they get.

I've tried to watch it a few times but never manage to get through it.  I managed to sit through The Jackal tough, that was bad enough.