Bad one-sheet posters are killing the blockbuster.
By Burbanked on Apr 28, 2006 in Movie Marketing 101, Movies, One-Sheetery | 1,288 views |
What exactly is it about R.V. (opening this weekend) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (July) that makes them both seem so hopelessly, brain-meltingly dull? There’s a lot of talent involved, at least one solid premise…yet R.V.’s currently rotting away at 26% at RT and no one seems to have much confidence in Girlfriend.
“Hello, Barry Sonnenfeld and Ivan Reitman? We were wondering if you could tell us just what the hell happened to all of that promise, that talent you used to have. And have either of you seen John Hughes?”
Once-Good Directors and the Bad Posters That Will Now Define Them, after the jump.
As is true in so many comedies anymore, let’s make our predictions for box office failure on the craptastically boring work done on these two movies’ one-sheet posters:
- See the poster at CinemaBlend.com if you’re aching to do so.
- The tagline - Boring. Unoriginal (and we know exactly what we’re talking about there). And, by the way, doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Why can’t anyone hear you scream? If you’re on a family vacation, wouldn’t your family hear you scream?
- The overall image and message - “Robin Williams’ talent? Ppphhhpt! We’ve got a wacky recreational vehicle!”
- A big, BIG version here at FilmForce
- The Photoshoppery - Luke Wilson is a decent actor. That’s why we’re sure that the idiotic, rom-com-staple disapproving look on his face must have been created electronically (Art director to designer: he doesn’t look sarcastic enough; can’t you purse his lips any more?).
- The overall image and message - Isn’t the humor here supposed to be that a regular guy is dating a superhero? And to accomplish that, shouldn’t she look like a superhero? Yes, she seems to be crushing a car, but that’s really not much to go on for anyone who needs to be sold on the premise. Would it have killed them to include a cape, perhaps?
With last summer’s movie attendance so far off the mark, we’d hoped that filmmakers would at least attempt a return to form this summer. It’s as if Hollywood just doesn’t even want to take our money anymore.
Because remember when summer movie one-sheets used to look like this?
My blog-love affair with cartoonist Doug Savage’s terrific daily Savage Chickens (
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because clearly Cage has decided to become action/thriller cinema’s first Polish great-grandma. (
Well, that’s too bad. Back a year or so ago when I heard that they’d be making a movie out of Judi and Ron Barrett’s terrific kids’ book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I hoped maybe it’d be made live-action. Handled well, the idea of seeing an actual town where it rained hotdogs and baked beans in an open-roof restaurant, as well as the bit where sanitation trucks clean up all the leftover rain/snow/food and feed it to the pets would be, I thought, a bundle of CG-imbued cinema fun. 
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