The worst American remakes of foreign films

There’s nothing Hollywood likes more than a proven formula. If a story worked once, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work again — hence, the industry’s love affair with remakes. This extends in particular to foreign films, which tend to be relegated to art houses. If a film from another country has earned critical acclaim and/or performed well at the worldwide box office, Hollywood would rather put its own spin on the material than letting the original artists gain a foothold in the U.S. market. Predictably, this has often led to disaster. Sometimes a film’s brilliance gets lost in translation; other times, studios just completely misunderstand what made the first film great.