The trailer for the remake of Fame is up now, on Yahoo, and it seems a fairly sincere and earnest thing, a reworking that can at least hold its head up in the company of Step Up 2 the Streets and its predecessor, and maybe even something like Rent. Yeah, at its core some of the same familiar aspirant-performer trappings that helped make the High School Musical franchise such a huge tween hit are there, but there seems to have been a concerted effort here to ground this puppy in the real world, or at least something approximating it. Gone are the fuzzy leggings and headbands — probably a good call. Good to see Charles Dutton grab some work, too.

I have no idea how this will do at the box office, but presumably distributor MGM has carved out a parcel of autumnal land to help woo school audiences. If nothing else, the Step Up movies (with their $114 and $150 million worldwide theatrical grosses, respectively), plus a so-so $24 million gross for spoof movie Dance Flick, prove there’s a teen-plus audience for performing arts school films, even if a lot of those teens probably made/make fun of overtly arty types at their own schools. Ahh… teenage contradiction and incongruousness. Fame releases nationwide on September 25.