Entertainment For Lively Minds
Worst ever quote on a film poster?
Whilst wandering through Waterloo underground station this morning, I noticed an advert for the film Role Models on DVD featuring Seann William Scott (from American Pie), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (from Superbad) and Paul Rudd (from all other films).
Amongst the usual raft of magazine quotes of "a must-see" and "hilariously funny - ****", the one that caught my eye was from Metro and was the biggest on the poster. It read:
"Like watching monkeys throw their own poo at each other on YouTube!"
Clearly, the makers of this poster think that's a good thing and have therefore given it pride of place.
Is it just me that thinks that's an awful, awful quote to put on your promo poster? Are there any examples of quotes even worse than that?
- More from Joe R.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Unfortunately
I think that quote might be ideal for the sort of people that fancy buying that particular DVD
I saw that....
...and deduced it came from the same school of marketing as gave birth to all the TV ads for pot noodle. It seemed the same "WTF, as long as we've got your attention...." policy.
But at least
the Pot Noodle adverts are mildly amusing and a bit entertainingly daft.
I'm all for knowing your target market but how is that quote going to draw in the casual viewer?
we've found pot noodles target audience!
:-)
A drumming gorilla, Phil Collins and some chocolate
Kung-fu films
back in the day had wonderful come-ons. A memorable example was super-imposed over close-ups of narrowed eyes giving piercing looks, saying
"Chinese sagacity fully justified!"
That's a movie you have to see, right?
At the risk of explaining a joke
It reminds me of the time that the Webcomic PVP was reviewed by the achingly pretentious Comics Journal, and they said something along the lines of it's the worst dreck that's ever assaulted their eyeballs. This lead PVP's creator to use that quote on the cover of one of his collected editions.
Incidentally I saw Role Models. Kiss and LARPing - what's not to like?
I'm reminded
of a mock theatre review for some Ray Cooney type "farce" from one of the Not The Nine O'Clock News sketchbooks which had the following quotes:
Quote 1: "I laughed so hard I split my sides"
Quote 2: "I couldn't stop laughing until someone's guts fell on my head"
also the Armando Inanucci
sketch were he took a theatre critic's review "to steal if you have to to get into see this play" literally, cue actors sneaking into theatre when the ushers weren't looking etc.
A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single parrot
...or something like that, for a parrot film that came out about 10 years ago. I always thought that was the most awful line.
PS I don't find Pot Noodle ads the least bit amusing. But then I'm not a student.
I'm not a student either
I guess my point was that Pot Noodle is an established brand that knows its own target market and is sticking to it.
Surely with a film out, you want a broad range of people to go and see it? Although the principal actors do seem to have a "brand" established for those sort of films, you'd want to get lots of people through the door (the door being the door of Blockbuster in this case). It just smacks to me of limiting their potential audience.
Oh, and there was one word that was in bigger letters than all the others: "Poo".
It could be that we've spent more time discussing
this poster than the PR company who produced it did?
Poo and PR are connected in my game
so it's sort of inevitable.
Heh heh...
well said!
Pyjama Tops
This reminds me of Pyjama Tops, a sex farce that ran for some time in the West End in the 70s. It always had a large poster outside the theatre with a quote from a distinguished critic: “More sexually arousing than Oh, Calcutta!”
Eventually, after Pyjama Tops had been running for many years, a journalist asked the critic what on earth he could have been thinking of, to say something nice about a play like that. The critic explained that he had been reviewing Oh, Calcutta! and had written “This is even less sexually arousing than Pyjama Tops”.