20 Most Hated Film Remakes & Reboots In Movie History

Often called ‘the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made’, 1963’s Charade is a wonderful portmanteau of a movie: part screwball comedy, part espionage thriller, part whodunnit, and part romance, director Stanley Donen succeeds in putting over each and every facet of each subgenre, never once putting a foot wrong.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn spark off each other as though they’d been working together for decades - in fact, this was the first time they’d met, let alone acted opposite one another, although it hadn’t been for lack of trying. Grant had refused lead roles in Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Love In The Afternoon because he didn’t think the twenty-five year age difference between them made a romantic movie believable.

Evidently circumstances had changed by the time Hepburn was in her thirties, because after a few minutes you honestly barely notice. As much as Charade’s twists and turns appeal, it’s the chemistry between these two matchless movie stars that gives the film its longevity.

Which is why it’s utterly bewildering that Mark Wahlberg was cast in the Cary Grant role for Jonathan Demme’s 2002 remake, The Truth About Charlie. Wahlberg is many things as an actor and a leading man, but ‘debonair’ is not one of them. Not only does Wahlberg’s inexplicable casting misfire wreck the film, it renders it pointless - a bizarre curio, at best.

It’s a shame. Thandie Newton is perfectly cast as a modern day Audrey Hepburn, but she has no one to work with. There are other issues - Demme’s a talented director, but fails to handle the multiple tonal shifts as seamlessly as Donen, or indeed at all, and the dialogue is weirdly, self-consciously stiff - but these things could have been fixed during the shoot or the edit.

Casting a fiery, working class Irish kid from Boston in the role of a suave man of mystery, however? That’s a dealbreaker.