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"It's like The Sound of Music meets Pulp Fiction"

Started by An tSaoi, February 12, 2010, 12:55:46 PM

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An tSaoi

Don't you just hate it when they do that? Taking two films and smashing them together to describe another film, as if it were some form of cinematic cross-breed. Sometimes it makes sense; Big Momma's House was described as "Mrs Doubtfire meets The Nutty Professor", which on paper isn't a bad comparison. At least you can see where they're coming from.

But most of the time it's lazy (at best) and nonsensical (at worst) - such as In The Loop being described as a cross between The Office and Dr Strangelove. Presumably it's like Strangelove because it's a satire, and like The Office because... it's somewhat similar in the way it's shot? I can understand why the marketing people do it; it's difficult to sell something original, so they have to compare it to previous films the audience may have enjoyed. That doesn't make it any better of course.

What awful "Film A meets Film B" marketing slogans can you think of? Real ones, mind you.

Oi! The tags don't suck any contribution from the thread, you only asked for real ones. The tags are jokes, which are expressly forbidden in the thread itself - hence, presumably, the lack of replies.

It is lazy shorthand, put out either by journalists or by the people publicising the films. I've definitely heard actors citing successful films their latest compares to during chatshow interviews. It makes a good soundbite, it sums the thing up for people who like to know what to expect before seeing a film - people who don't want to leave their comfort zone of pop-culture familiarity. It's "you liked that? Then come and see this, too!"

You can be pretty sure that whole films are being written and funded on the basis of this 'popular formula meets popular formula' formula.

It reminds me of the good old '...on acid' style of reviewing, as covered by Lee and Herring -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF2fN4MmMAY


Jemble Fred

I just had my cake and ate it when writing a game preview by saying that a forthcoming title would be described as 'Metro 2033 with a hefty dose of Prototype and a bit of Half-Life 2' by a lazy journalist.

.......... Like me. Trouble is, the vaaaaast majority of games on 360 really are just re-treads of old games, either as official sequels or complete rip-offs, so it's hard to avoid that kind of comparison.

JPA

I'm struggling to think of actual examples - I've got The Machinist here though which has 'Fight Club meets Memento!' on the DVD cover, though that's hardly a nonsensical description.

There does seem to be an unwritten rule though that animated comedy can only ever be compared with other animated comedy, so the Family Guy season 1 DVD bears the following garbled quote from Entertainment Weekly:

'Family Guy is what you'd get if you put Hank Hill, Homer Simpson and Cartman in a blender!'

Which makes no sense because it compares an entire programme to elements of three individual characters. Unless the reviewer was just using 'Family Guy' as a lazy shorthand for Peter Griffin, but you'd assume the quote would be 'who you'd get' in that case.

Saucer51

I have an old vid of Green Card - I know - and it was marketed as "this year's Pretty Woman!" Which is a really sneaky way of aligning a mediocre flick with something a bit more watchable. Pretty Woman isn't up there with Judgement at Nuremberg but it's actually a quite palatable fairy tale and pure escapist whimsy. Gerard Depardieu is no Richard Gere and I was on Julia Robert's side from scene 1. I just wanted Andi Mcdowell's character to be fatally mugged in Central Park.

Ginyard

It might be more fun to think some up as I can't think of any. I suppose that's for a friday fun thread.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


The Mighty Boosh's book seems to have stirred up a deluge of this type of thing from reviewers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Book_of_Boosh

Someone gave me that fucking book for Christmas the year before last. The disappointment - I can't tell you. Not that I now owned the fucking thing, but because...I thought they knew me.

Good pisstake of it in the Mitchell and Webb Book this year, though. It's like David Mitchell met Robert Webb and they wrote a book in Robert's kitchen.


the midnight watch baboon


mobias

I actually hate it more when critics say something like 'its a horror movie for people who don't like horror movies' Its just such a condescending journalistic conceit. The worst one I ever heard was when The Word magazine reviewed a Chemical Brothers album a few years back and said 'its dance music for people who don't like dance music' It was just such a ridiculous comment to make about the one of the worlds most highly regarded and definitely most succesful dance bands.

Lazy and ignorant criticism really bugs me, epecially when its in the mainstream press.