Hollywood thinks the '80s are totally rad

LOS ANGELES (MCT) — Actor-writer-director Jorma Taccone remembers with loving fondness the gear montage from almost every '80s action flick of his youth — Rambo movies and "Die Hard" and the "entire canon" of Arnold Schwarzenegger. "It's people putting the big Bowie knife into the sheath, the shell belts over the chest, click-clacking the gun. It was a quintessential awesome moment. It has permeated the minds of people who grew up in that era. There are entire Web sites dedicated to the gear-up montage."

Of course, Taccone has included several choice gear-up moments in his new film "MacGruber," based on the "Saturday Night Live" skits and starring Will Forte and Kristen Wiig. Opening May 21, "MacGruber" pays hommage to the action films of the Reagan years. But Taccone is far from the only filmmaker discovering his mojo in the high-concept, garish boom-boom fare of that long-ago decade.

They're baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

If you go to the cineplex any time in the next year or so, you can catch new, big-screen versions of "Clash of the Titans" (April 2), "The Karate Kid" (June 11), "The A-Team" (June 11), "Red Dawn" (Nov. 24) and "The Thing" (2011), as well as the sequel "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" (Sept. 24) and "Hot Tub Time Machine" (just opened), which is not a remake or sequel, just the tale of a pack of middle-age guys (including '80s fixture John Cusack) who return to their youthful heyday in a time-bending Jacuzzi amid a zillion references to touchstones like "Back to the Future," the rock group Poison and girls in leg warmers. And still more are brewing. There's the big-screen version of "21 Jump Street" (co-written by Jonah Hill), a new version of "Poltergeist," "Ghostbusters III" and "The Smurfs" movie with Neil Patrick Harris (or, in '80s parlance, Doogie Howser) about those lovable blue creatures best known from the Hanna-Barbera animated series.

Call it the nostalgia of the fortysomething studio head, producer or writer for the films of their youth and the wonder they once engendered. Or call it a sign of the creative exhaustion plaguing Hollywood.

Having plundered comic books and '70s genre staples such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," nervous producers are vigorously hunting for brands with built-in audience awareness, not just here but in foreign markets, where American TV seems to play in an endless loop.

The marketing theory, as espoused by more than a few participants, is that the new editions (usually endowed with the latest in filmmaking magic and playing off some new cultural elements) will appeal to both nostalgic parents and their progeny. Of course, for every "Charlie's Angels" hit, there's a "Land of the Lost"-size flop.