Remaking bad movies

I’d like to offer a quibble to Mr. Polansky’s argument against the remake of “Friday the 13th,” in which he writes:

The original wasn’t remotely frightening, and moreover it represented a kind of mediocrity that can’t really be improved on.

But isn’t mediocrity by definition improvable? Unless you’re arguing that “Friday the 13th” (1980) reaches the Platonic ideal of a mediocre film and that “Friday the 13th” (2009) is striving to reach the same mediocrity, aren’t there many ways to improve upon a mediocre film? Give it a little style? Make it better at what it does (in the case of “Friday the 13th,” make it a superior nudity-and-violence-delivery-device, which the new film certainly is)? As I mentioned in my review, I find the remake of this film far less insulting than the remake of, say, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” since the latter has actually held up relatively well over the years.

And if I can get a little shameless for a moment, if any of our loyal readers have any entertainment industry questions in desperate need of answering–what to do this weekend at the multiplex, what’s new on DVD, who’s taking home Oscar gold–stop by my Washington Times live chat at 2. Judging by the level of participation we tend to have on these things, I can pretty much guarantee your question will be answered.