five go mad on mescaline

In other breaking news;

Kirrin Bay is now Kirrinatoga, California!

They all have superpowers!

Everyone enjoys lashings of Coca Cola at the local McDonalds!

Timmy's a robot!

George's dad is a scientist working for an evil maniac in the secret volcano lair on Kirrin Island!

The American kid saves the day!

I think I am going to be sick

disney *shudder*

Well, we'll just have to wait to see how they fuck it up.

How can you report on the Famous five without mentioning the presence or not of Ginger Beer? Or lashings for that matter.

All they have to do is change the target to people with ginger hair, Americans, Israelis and fundamentalist Christians and no-one would mind one bit.

Well, I'm for lashings and lashings of ginger beer before venturing onto the train for the weekend rush...

This story reminds me of the comic strip production in the title. Wonder if it's kicking around on the net somewhere, be good to see it again..

Presumably the 'lashings of ginger beer' will be replaced by alcopops in the modern version, Joyoto will be happy-slapped and the dog will savage a small child and be put down. I think I'm getting the hang of this user-generated story thing, off to submit it now.

I always though she was a lesbian.

Hear that loud humming noise?

It's Ms Blyton rotating quickly!

I'll be happy if the mad but clueless boffin "Uncle Quentin" turns out to be Tarantino in the movie.

The BBC article is either a: the funniest thing you've ever read, or b: the raping of your childhood.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7306752.stm

Now am I just being unduly cynical or do they all look more than a little like the cast of Scooby Doo?

I would read those books over and over. I was very happy the day I inherited them from my sister.

Happily read a whole SS book before I got up on a Sunday morning.

Why is that updates of certain stories fondly remembered from childhood, e.g. Thunderbirds and Famous Five, trigger great wrath, and others not, e.g. Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes and, for that matter, the Gospel of John? When the BBC updated Robin Hood there were a few "lol Robin Hoodie and what's that towelhead doing there" sniggers, but there wasn't this much "oh noes my childhood" stuff.

Stories get updated. Since pretty much every story is a variant on the same three different plotlines (1. man meets woman 2. man fights man 3. man fights world) anyway, the only difference between an update and a supposedly 'new' story is the degree to which they admit that there are no original ideas, ever, anywhere.

When someone chooses to update a story and its characters, it may be laziness and it may be a pale imitation, but no matter how bad it is it's a tribute to the enduring appeal of that story that someone wants to update it. Now this being Disney, I'd put my money on it being actually lazy and a pale imitation, but even so I do have to give some some grudging kudos for writing a story in which kids go out on a moor without GPS and filling in a risk assessment first. And to a lot of people the 25% ethnic minority proportion is conservative compared to reality.

George was not a lesbian, I think the euphemism is "greedy" today. (ie fucks anything)

G. Oh Timmy your sooo licky

A. Dont let him do that George,

G. But he likes it,

Dick was gay though and had a massive crush on Julian the team leader of the group, no matter what the BBC says.

Maybe it's just me not concentrating as it's the end of a short week. But did anyone else have to read this bit twice?

"The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy."

Perhaps I should just go to the pub and forget about it....

Bubble

I was reading the posts bottom to top for some reason and came across:

"Happily read a whole SS book before I got up on a Sunday morning."

Thought thats being a Nazi and Proud.

Is it just me, or do I detect a scent of Scooby Doo in the characterisations? Appropriate now that Scooby is rather long in the canine tooth methinks. Ann's daughter=Daphne, Max=Fred (though less glamrock and obviously more intelligent), Dylan=Velma and...well there's never going to be a 'light relief' character in the FF so Jo must be the sincere, intense token PC character.

And since when was George the leader of the group? She was petulant and spoilt, hardly leadership qualities although courageous and loyal to her friends. I bet she never made the butties for them.

@ Darren B

"Happily read a whole SS book before I got up on a Sunday morning."

Five go mad in Poland?

Disney is the reason that, one day, someone is going to nuke the entire USA out of existence, figuring the deaths of millions of wonderful, and mostly innocent, citizens to be "a small price to pay" to dispose of the evil that is Disney.

Every story Disney touches is turned to shit. When will people learn: "DO NOT sell the film rights to your stuff to Disney!"

As a kid, I used to love the Famous Five books but grew out of them pretty fast when I twigged how contrived and simplistic the plots were (never mind the racism, classism and sexism; they were just plain formulaic) - but not even predigested-pap-in-a-can crap like TFF deserves to be Disneyed!

For my money, Comic Book's "Five go Mad in Dorset" and "Five go Mad on Mescaline" were brilliant, having captured the repeated "plot" elements of the books brilliantly.

Laughed myself silly - good story.

Can I have your babies?