Remake of Turkey's favorite school flick flunks at the box office
Based on novels by the popular author Rifat Ilgaz, the "Chaos Class" film series has been a Turkish favorite for four decades, but a remake of the original comedy has been widely panned.
A remake of one of Turkey's most beloved film series hit theaters nationwide last month, apparently to the chagrin of much of the country. A mere 70,272 tickets were sold for the opening weekend of “Hababam Sinifi Yeniden” (“The Chaos Class, Once Again”), a fraction of the 450,783 for the premier of the last sequel in the series, in 2006.
The popular and iconic series “Hababam Sinifi” (“The Chaos Class”) follows the escapades of a notorious class of pranksters at an Istanbul boarding school who smoke on school grounds and cheat on exams with impunity until a stern new vice principal arrives. The original movie and the first three sequels, made between 1975 and 1977, are revered by Turks, while the three films released in the 2000s and featuring a different cast were not as well received, though they performed much better at the box office than the new remake.
Currently rated a 2.6 out of 10 on IMDB — compared with the 9.4 commanded by the original movie — “The Chaos Class, Once Again” is the subject of 33 pages of entries on the popular online forum Eksi Sozluk, where users engage in frank and often crass discussions on a range of topics. Many of those commenting have voiced contempt for the remake, with one wordsmith describing the film as “Queen without Freddie Mercury.”
“Hababam Sinifi Yeniden” was filmed with a new cast, due to the fact that most of the main actors from the original films have passed away. Halit Akcatepe, Tarik Akan and Munir Ozkul, some of the most celebrated and cherished actors in Turkish film history, are all dead. Kemal Sunal, perhaps the doyen of Turkish comedy acting, died in 2000.
