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I read something a few days ago about the new Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston movie "The Break Up". It wasn't good. To paraphrase, the movie was dumb, predictable, severely un-funny and pretty much terrible. What happened afterward is both commonplace, and personally confusing to me. Namely, most people didn't read any of the reviews, went out and saw the movie, and it was only a matter of days before the candid, honest reviews were replaced by things like this: "'The Break-Up' is top weekend film". That article doesn't say anything objective about "The Break Up", other than how much money people flushed down the toilet by watching it. Is it a good movie? According to the reviews earlier this week, it's not. But now (and from here on until it's not in theaters anymore), the press is only going to mention this film in terms of how well it's doing in the box office. There's something wrong with that. A movie can do well at the box office for a number of reasons. It can be a really good film that your friends insisted you should see. Or it could be a sequel to something you enjoyed, so you want to see where the story goes. Or - and this is what seems to be happening with most Hollywood productions these days - it could be rather forgettable film with a bland, predictable plot that a bunch of people go see because Hollywood marketing campaigns work. Add to this list films like "The Da Vinci Code" (everyone I know who has seen this film said it's basically a silly film, worse than the book, with terrible acting) and "King Kong" (oh lord, did that movie suck...). But hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people went to the theaters to see these films. Was it worth it? Were they any good? This constant cycle makes me wonder why audiences aren't more critical of the marketing hype compared to the quality of the film. If anything, the less marketing a film has, the more likely it is to be good. I'm thinking March of the Penguins, Napolean Dynamite, Lost in Translation - all great, entertaining (albeit quirky) films. This exact same marketing hype thing happened with Steve Martin's remake of "The Pink Panther" a few months ago. The first few days it was out, the reviews were just terrible. I mean really, really terrible. But they were marketing the hell out of that movie, and once the box office numbers came in, whaddya know "Pink Panther" is the #1 film. And yet it was terrible. So here are my lessons on movie watching: |
