I absolutely love the original, but I hated the remake. The actresses failed to make the characters their own. There was so sentiment, no character development, no connection between them.
The original film has two strong scenes that they absolutely ruined in the remake. One, was the Shelby's seizure. Julia Roberts was amazing and didn't fear do push her limits. Rashad acted like she was drunk staring at nothing. No to mention the fact that Truvy poked her. I am not kidding. The moment Shelby starts having the seizure she pokes her.
Latifah may be a good actress but the role of M'Lynn was simply not for her. The highlight of the movie is her outburst. Shally Field was phenomenal during that scene. You could hear and feel her pain. Latifah said the words, but there was no emotion behind them.
The character of Shelby can be wrapped up in just one line. "I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special". Once again, they kept that quote hidden for the ending where it lost it's meaning.
I hated how they left out Spud and his confession in the end that he can't live without his wife. Anyway, I wouldn't watch it again. In fact I wanna watch the original once more just to get this fiasko out of my memory.