I saw the Truman Show this year. I absolutely loved it. I never watched it before because of the name. If I thought about it at all, I thought it was one of those “making of” movies, like that Howard Stern movie about how he got to where it was. I find those kinds of movies incredibly boring.
Instead it turned out to be one of my favorite kind of movies and I really enjoyed it.
What else? How about Oldboy, another movie with a sort of similar premise, another one I enjoyed; but the name isn’t exactly enticing.
William Friedkin’s Sorceror has to be a poster child for this. It sounds like it’s about Carlos Castaneda, or something (the shots of jungles with the Tangerine Dream music helped reinforce this). Who would’ve thought it was a remake of The Wages of Fear (which could also qualify for this thread. But at least it makes a bit more sense). It wasn’t until years later that I understood the title.
For misleading, the one that still gets me is The Last King of Scotland, which I never would’ve thought of as being about Idi Amin.
I mentioned in another thread some months ago about films where the title came from an original book, but the circumstances had changed so much between the book and the film that they had to give some rationale in the film for the title. This is the case with Don’t Eat the Daisies (they threw in Doris Day singing a song with that title) and Hearts in Atlantis (they made up a sequence to account for that title in the movie, because the ones that are responsible fior it in the book don’t show up onscreen.) And “Hearts in Atlantis” tells you nothing about what you’re going to see.
Sequels that use clever titles are obscure if you don’t know about the original film that inspired the title. The titles of The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball and of At the Drop of Another Hat confused the hell out of me for years.
If you go into Fight Club expecting it to be about a bunch of people in a club, fighting, you’ll have your brain twisted into a knot by the time it’s done…just like the rest of us did.
I’m not sure what to think of the title “Million Dollar Baby” if I had no background on the movie to begin with.
Oh, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”. Sounds like an awesome movie, maybe with some fantasy elements or at least a great deal of overarching drama. It turned out to be a dreadfully boring film about a murder trial with a bunch of characters that almost felt like vignettes, not really connected to one another. Yuck.
'nother one, cuz I’ve heard it referred to as the “Girl version of Fight Club”*
Black Swan. Even if you know it’s about ballet. It gets very dark very quick. Amazing movie, but it’s really not about ballet. That’s just the vehicle for Natalie’s character to go all batshit insane. She could have been obsessed about anything.
FTR, I try not to tell people I’m convincing to watch the movie that it’s like Fight Club, because (trying not to spoil anything here), I don’t think the movies are connected in the same way and I don’t want them going in with pre-conceptions, it’s just a good to get people that say “I’m not watching a ballet movie” to watch it.
All of the sequels to The Thin Man qualify. In the original, Nick Charles was trying to find a “thin man with white hair”. That case was solved in the first movie, but the appellation carried over to Charles himself for the sequels.
A similar thing happened with the Pink Panther movies.
Freedomland has nothing whatever to do with the circa 1960 amusement park, although I gather that the book it’s based on did. In this case, though, they didn’t even try to make the title make sense.
If you’re not a sports fan, calling boxer Jimmy Braddock “Cinderella Man” makes no sense.
But sports fans have heard the phrase “Cinderella story” thousands of times, with regard to athletes or teams that come out of nowhere to win championships.
For a long while, my parents refused to watch Get Him to the Greek - that sort of continuation of the Aldous Snow (played by Russel Brand) rock star character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
When they finally caved, they loved it - and admitted it was the title that first scared them off. It really is a good movie and I think it could have been in league with the Hangover in terms of popularity if it had been given a better title.
I haven’t seen Get Him To The Greek, but I think Hot Tub Time Machine, while it is, more or less, about a hot tub time machine, also could be just a notch below The Hangover if it wasn’t for the stupid title. I think that scared a lot of people off. I usually tell people I went in expecting Bill & Ted and ended up with Back To The Future (meets The Hangover). I’ve never had anyone regret watching it.
I was just thinking about that last night.