Movie Poster Blurbs

It’s considered the height of movie critic prestige to have your review quoted on the official film poster, the newspaper advertisement for the film, or the video (DVD) box. The big boys -- Siskel, Ebert, Roeper, Maltin, Travers, Siegel -- are always the first picked, if they’ve said something positive about the movie. Then you go down the chain of critic command: national TV and newspaper (USA Today) critics, local TV and newspaper critics, random people kidnapped on the street and forced to watch the film, and finally, semi-legitimate yet pretentious web critics (Ain’t It Cool News, Film Threat). Of course, MRFH has the same odds of being used for a movie poster blurb as my dog suddenly rearing up on his hind legs and lecturing me on advanced calculus (I envision he uses a monocle), but that goes without saying.

The history of the critic blurbs is interesting and fascinating and we won’t go into it here. Some critics, particularly Roger Ebert, whine a lot about how their blurbs are taken far out of context with the rest of their reviews, so they could use any hankie donations you and your neighborhood relief drive can gather up. A few years ago, Sony Pictures made headlines for inventing their own fictitious movie critic named David Manning to attribute highly positive remarks to their less-fortunate films. Then there’s the elusive "Sixty Second Review", a largely bogus critic who whores his exclamation point-intensive writing style out to any and all bad movies requiring a spin blurb.

In this article, we’re going to revisit actual movie posters of some of the worst film offenders on MRFH to see what blurbs were quoted -- and give you our response. We don’t much care if the blurb is the fault of the critic, who made a horribly wrong call, or the studio publicist, who took a blurb out of context. Call us callous, but if it’s on the poster or in the official movie ad, that’s all we care about. Today, we’re talking in the royal "we", even though I’m the only one here. The rest of the staff doesn’t work from Tuesday through Sunday.

This speaks for itself. Sadly.

[If you’re interested in a brief background anecdote on how I worked on this article, read on. If you’re pressed for time, or if you think your mom is going to call your cell phone at any moment now and make you look important in front of your friends as you whip your "Mexican Hatdance"-playing Nokia out and answer authoritatively, then you might as well get on with the blurbs themselves.

I spent a lot, and I mean a lot of time looking around the internet for any online collection of these blurbs. Outside of a couple articles talking about the more recent movie poster blurbs, there’s just nothing out there. So I resorted to toting in a notebook to my local Media Play, spending about two hours pulling movies off the DVD racks to see if they had a weird blurb on the back I could use.

This confounded the poor red-shirted ensigns who worked at this store, maybe because they thought I was a district manager in shorts doing inventory on their product or something. An employee would scuttle up to me, then drink in the fact that I’d be briskly yanking some of the worst movies known to man and scrutinizing the backs of the packaging, sometimes writing furiously in a notebook in sloppy print, then putting them back. They’d look, they’d scuttle away, and pounce on some easier mark to sell pre-orders and service warranties to. By the way, my general philosophy in regards to the clerks who constantly pressure me to pre-order games, movies and books is this: Never. Pre-ordering only helps the store lock in a sale, while temporarily depriving me of a few bucks in exchange for the dubious peace of mind that my store should probably hold a copy for me when they get it -- they’ve messed this up quite often -- and denying me the opportunity to shop elsewhere if a store gets in the product a day or two before the store I pre-ordered from does. But the clerks don’t seem to get this, and I explain it to them every single time. They get all moody and say that "these things sell out faster than you’d think", and I respond with, "Well, if your store can’t be responsible to stock enough product to satisfy the demand for it, I’ll take my business someplace else. I don’t have to work for the privilege of shopping at your store; you should have to work to keep me there."

Honestly, during my last trip to Media Play, a clerk made it sound like they just might not have enough copies of the upcoming Stephen King novel to go around. As if it was a scarce commodity, instead of how it always ends up being -- enough copies to build entire forts out of, so the employees can toss paperback Koontz at each other. End of pointless anecdote.]

40 Days and 40 Nights

THE BLURB: "Consistently Engaging, Clever & Insightful! A frothy comedy with subtext! Josh Hartnett reveals his versatility!" (Kevin Thomas, LA Times)

ANALYSIS: While 40 Days and 40 Nights hasn’t been reviewed at MRFH yet, we’ve kicked it around enough to know that this stinker of a flick made quite a few enemies on our staff. Is it engaging? Like a root canal that you can’t get out of. Clever? Well, they tricked me into seeing it, so that’s something. But frothiness aside, I’m really curious what "versatility" Josh Harnett -- a guy who vaguely resembles and acts like a sleepy tree sloth -- shows in this film. "Struggling with horniness while trying not to fall into a coma" pretty much sums up his entire role.

Men In Black II

THE BLURB: "Funnier than the first!" (Joel Siegel, Good Morning America)

ANALYSIS: Of course it was. Unless you actually saw the first movie, in which case it’s clear that Joel has a brain parasite slowly gnawing through his Obvious Cortex.

Scooby-Doo

THE BLURB: "You’ll howl with laughter." (Earl Dittman, Wireless Magazine)

ANALYSIS: Earl, usually howling comes from extreme torture. Now look at the audience again and think about it, won’t you?

The Hot Chick

THE BLURB: "I have to praise Schneider…It’s a little like watching Tom Hanks in Big!" (Mary Kunz, The Buffalo News)

ANALYSIS: The little-Big pun aside, one does wonder if Mary is coming on to Rob Schneider. "Mr. Schneider, may I praise you? You’re like a tenth-generation copied mix tape of an actual actor!"

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

THE BLURB: "Finally a ride worth taking. LXG is the most original action-adventure of the summer." (Jim Ferguson, FOX-TV/ KMSB-TV)

ANALYSIS: Kids, even if the stranger is offering you some very tasty candy, that’s not a good reason to get in the car with him. So let’s examine how LXG is the "most original action-adventure" -- is it because, unlike so many other films, the editor decided to cut the film in a way that makes no sense to most people off drugs? Perhaps it’s because not many other movies take a genuinely bold source material and turn it into the movie equivalent of mashed-up baby food? Oh, wait, LXG was original because nobody else was stupid enough to have a guy in a fully iron metal suit use a flamethrower. Silly us.

Dreamcatcher

THE BLURB: "A first-rate edge-of-your-seat thriller loaded with suspense, whiz-bang action and creepy excitement" (Shawn Edwards, FOX-TV – Kansas City)

ANALYSIS: Five hyphens in a sentence fragment notwithstanding, who on earth uses the word "whiz-bang" anymore? Pretty much no word combination in that blurb applies to the movie, unless you pare it down to "a whiz".

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days

THE BLURB: "The ultimate chick-flick for guys. Delightfully funny and fun all the way." (David Sheehan, KCBS-TV)

ANALYSIS: "Hey Bob, did you see that ‘How To Lose A Guy’ movie this past weekend?" "I sure did, Stan! And I must say, it was delightfully funny!" "Delightfully?" "Oh, indeedy! I particularly enjoyed how emasculating and condescending to our gender it was!" "Can I come over tonight and do your hair?" "Only if it’s delightful!"

The Doom Generation

THE BLURB: "A savagely funny ride" (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone)

ANALYSIS: Since this film features a road trip, it can be called a ride. And with nazi castration and decapitated heads spewing relish, "savage" is an apt attribute. But where, Mr. Travers, is the promised "funny"? Did it come before or after the horrid stomach retching I endured a various points in this abomination? Please, I need to know. I like to suffer for my funny.

Freddy Got Fingered

THE BLURB: "Hilarious! The most original comedy of the year" (Variety Radio)

ANALYSIS: All I can suggest is that whoever was quoted for this be forced to take their entire extended family -- mom, dad, children, cousins, aunt, uncles, grandparents, nephews, nieces, godfathers, you name it -- to a closed, locked room and have to sit through this entire film. I, myself, have attempted to watch FGF twice, and still have not been able to make it through without turning it off in disgust. If that family isn’t clawing at each other and/or falling into catatonic shock by about the mid-way point, I’ll eat my shoe. It’s just that hilarious.

Very Bad Things

THE BLURB: "Savagely funny" (Dennis Dermody, Paper Magazine)

ANALYSIS: There’s that "savagely funny" blurb again, but still that doesn’t explain how this is an actual laughing-out-loud type of humor. Sure, maybe some disturbed inmates of an abandoned mental asylum can squeeze a few chuckles out of this film while picking their teeth with shards of victim’s bones, but they’re not the majority. Yet. So remember, if you see the words "savagely funny" on any movie package, mentally translate that to "sucks like a goose shot out of an airlock into the merciless vacuum of deep space" and run away.

THE BLURB: "Hysterically funny! Jim Carrey delivers laugh-filled, out-of-control comedy…" (Jeanne Wolf, Jeanne Wolf‘s Hollywood)

ANALYSIS: "… just not in this particular movie!"

THE BLURB: "It‘s a kid-friendly family film with lot‘s of good old-fashioned laughs." (Toni Ruberto, Buffalo News)

ANALYSIS: Putting aside the fact that this movie has no laughs in it whatsoever, I’m severely puzzled as to what constitutes an "old-fashioned" laugh, versus a "new-fashioned" one. In my mind, I picture grizzled prospectors clapping their hands to their bellies and letting out grizzled guffaws, but I don’t think kids or families nowadays know what it’s like to be forging a new frontier solely on the hope that riches await you in a hostile, unforgiving territory. Unless they’ve gone to Denny’s lately.

THE BLURB: "Non-stop spy thrills… Val Kilmer is terrific!" (ABC-TV)

ANALYSIS: Since no actual person is attributed with this quote, one has to assume the TV station somehow gained sentient intelligence in order to endorse a questionable film that most certainly has long stops between said spy thrills. Maybe the station had a crush on Kilmer and just wanted an opportunity to get that out in the open. They could’ve said the same thing about a cookingware commercial: "Nothing sticks our Teflon wok… Val Kilmer is terrific!"

THE BLURB: "Angela Jolie delivers! She‘s the Ultimate Superhero!" (Sandie Newton, CBS-TV)

ANALYSIS: This is one of my favorite blurbs, for a couple reasons. What does Angela Jolie deliver? Pizza? Triplets? Subpoenas? But I’m just glad that Ms. Newton set me straight about superheroes. Batman? Superman? Spider-Man? Wolverine? The Thing? The Incredible Hulk? They’re not ultimate enough! Lara Croft is the ultimatest! So sit back and be content with the knowledge that you’re living in an era where we’ve finally found the single, most ultimate superhero to ever bounce across the planet.

THE BLURB: "Kids will have a hopping good time!" (Neil Rosen, NY-1 News, New York)

ANALYSIS: I'm far past convinced that nobody loves a terrible, horrible, good-for-nothing pun than movie critics. They feast on them, unable to rip their teeth away from another juicy play on words that causes stomach cancer in those who read it. You know that Neil's over there, gloating to his soulless self at how witty he is. Neil, you disgust all of us.

THE BLURB: "A great date movie! You'll fall in love with Mena Suvari. Jason Biggs gives a great performance." (Ralph Garman, KROQ Radio)

ANALYSIS: When a studio takes one brief blurb to use for their promotion, you can usually justify the odd out-of-context rave by saying, "Well, I bet the rest of the review just trashed the flick." No such luck with Ralph, whose three damning sentences show how blind he is to that little thing we like to call reality. A date movie? Date rape, maybe, considering that's what one of the key plot points was about. I also failed to fall in love with Mena Suvari, and I want a refund for that.

THE BLURB: "Thumbs up! Scary Movie delivers!" (Roger Ebert)

ANALYSIS: As I cradle my head in my hands, I once again try to get into Ebert's head. Yes, we're all allowed to have varying tastes in movies, but this guy just confounds me. He typically slams pretty much any base/dumb humor flick, except for the rare ultra-stinkers, which he then heartily endorses like it was his own child who just got into film school and had to start somewhere and porn wasn't an option. Those thumbs have led America awry.

THE BLURB: "You'll laugh harder, louder, and more often!" (Fox-TV)

ANALYSIS: FOX COMMANDS YOU. FOX OWNS YOU. IF YOU DO NOT LAUGH HARDER, LOUDER AND MORE OFTEN DURING THIS MOVIE, FOX WILL COME INTO YOUR HOUSE AND BREAK YOUR KNEECAPS. THIS, FOX COMMANDS!

THE BLURB: "Amanda Peet is primed to explode!" (Rolling Stone)

ANALYSIS: Not that I know a lot about women or anything (I really don't), but I'd hazard a guess and say that females might not be too keen on being imagined as something on the verge of a dangerous explosion. Probably due to overeating and hormones. Sure, I might be reading between the lines, but then again, can you honestly say that Amanda Peet is primed for anything in this flick other than early retirement?