Some Super, some weren't

Coming Attractions: Clint Eastwood, Ferris Bueller & The Avengers score at SuperBowl XLVI

A clip from The Avengers
Matthew Broderick channels Ferris Bueller in the widely praised Honda ad.
Honda
Clint Eastwood backs Detroit in a Chrysler ad
Chrysler

Do it right – like the folks promoting Independence Day certainly did back in 1996 – and you plant an indelibly effective image in the minds of moviegoers while triggering their must-see impulses.

Do it wrong – like people who approved a 2003 ad for Ang Lee’s Hulk featuring not-ready-for-prime-time temp f/x – and you incite a deafening roar of negative buzz that will be well-nigh impossible to overcome.

That’s the challenge facing any studio that purchases ultra-expensive advertising time during a Super Bowl telecast to promote a major motion picture weeks or months before that movie opens at theaters and drive-ins everywhere. The upside is, you have a captive audience of zillions. The downside is, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

As I noted after The Big Game last year: When hyping a film during the Super Bowl, it’s not enough to be fast and flashy. In addition to selling the sizzle, you’ve also got to give audiences at least a hint of how the steak is going to taste. (The Independence Day spot did both – with inspired succinctness – by showing extraterrestrial invaders making the White House go boom.)

Keeping that in mind, here’s an instant replay of my initial reactions to the movie ads served during Super Bowl XLVI.

The Dictator — It begins with clips of real-life “fallen” despots (Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, etc.) then cuts to Sacha Baron Cohen as the title character, brazen and heavily bearded, tweaking NBC with a claim that he already knows the final score of The Big Game. (The ad ran after the National Anthem, but before kick-off.)

And then there’s a very rude Kardashian Sisters gag. Yes, it’s not very different from the trailer already on view in movie theaters. But I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t laugh. And I bet a lot of people getting their first look at The Dictator thought, “Oh, man, that’s the Borat dude! Gotta see that!”

Battleship – Invading extraterrestrials attack earth with… with… with giant flaming spinning tops? So Liam Neeson has to counterattack with a U.S. Navy battleship? And it’s all based on a Hasbro board game? Well, look, I didn’t think Transformers would work as a movie, and I sure called that one wrong. But this? Excuse me, I don’t think so.

John Carter – Hunky dude slices and dices CGI monsters. Ho-hum. Bad sign: They’re continuing to avoid any direct reference (except in extremely tiny print at the very end) to the source material (Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars books). Worse sign: They’re sampling Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” in the theme music. Last time that happened, it was for that godawful Godzilla remake.

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax – Right now, all across the great land of ours, fathers already are working on the excuses they’ll give for not taking their kids to see this one. “Sorry, honey, but you know I can’t take that much sweetness with my diabetes…”

Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace in 3D – Sherlock Holmes: “I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." Dr. Watson: "The dog did nothing in the night-time." Sherlock Holmes: "That was the curious incident." Joe Leydon: “The Super Bowl spot for Phantom Menace didn’t show Jar-Jar Binks at all.” Sherlock Holmes: “Well, d’uh.”

The Avengers – Sold. Where do I buy my opening-day ticket? (Remember: You’re reading something written by a guy who bought the very first issue of The Avengers published by Marvel Comics back in 1963. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.)

G.I. Joe: Retaliation – Dwayne Johnson (The Actor Formerly Known as The Rock), Bruce Willis, sword-wielding ninjas and lots of stuff blowing up real good. Not shabby at all. But they blew it by not holding a little longer on the money shot: The unfurling of Cobra flags and banners at the White House. Remember what worked so well for Independence Day?

Act of Valor – “Starring Active Duty Navy SEALs?” WTF? Is that where our tax dollars are going? To make a generic action-adventure flick that looks like it should be premiering in Redbox kiosks?

Audi S7 Vs. Vampires – OK, I admit: It isn’t really a movie ad. But for those of you who’ve always wanted to see those Twilight bloodsuckers get what’s coming to them – and you know who you are, so don’t be coy about it – this spot rocks.

Imported from Detroit – This one wasn’t a movie ad either. But, frankly, after seeing it, I’m afraid that if I don’t give it props, Clint Eastwood will come to my house and personally kick my ass. (Even if he saw my son’s new Dodge Charger parked outside.) So let me say that this year’s Chrysler ad with Clint was even cooler than last year’s ad with Eminem. And I’ll be curious to see how many folks (in addition to Michelle Malkin) interpret this spot as political: Clint isn’t telling you to vote for Barack Obama, but he’s definitely telling you not to vote for any candidate who would have allowed the Detroit auto industry to fail.

Honda CR-V – A friend watched this instant-classic commercial – a kinda-sorta sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – and emailed: “Somewhere, Matthew Broderick has a portrait that’s in really, REALLY bad shape…”

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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