as I’ve mentioned in a similar thread, a friend once went to see Looking for Mr. Goodabar, thinking that she was seeing the Neil Simon movie The Goodbye Girl (both 1977).
THAT must have been a rude awakening!
8½, which is a semi-autobiographical story about director Federico Fellini, and 9½ Weeks, which is two hours of Mickey Rourke fucking Kim Basinger.
Alien v. Predator with any of the actual Alien or Predator movies.
Big Trouble and Big Trouble in Little China.
Urban Cowboy and Midnight Cowboy. Big difference. Hoo boy.
Well, not exactly what the OP asked for. But if you’re looking for a documentary about the Watergate scandal…don’t rent Deep Throat.
I read that as Mickey Rooney. Man - that was a weird moment in my head.
Susan
Sandra Bullock’s recovering alcoholic from 28 Days would be quite out of place in the rage-infected streets of zombie london chronicled in 28 Days Later.
I thought they were both brilliant.
There’s The Princess Bride, great great comedic flick from 1987, and The Princess Diaries, a Disney movie about a girl who finds out she’s heir to a throne.
I was supposed to watch And the Band Played On, the documentary about the origins of the AIDS epidemic, for one of my college classes. Instead I got The Boys in the Band, a movie about 1960s/70s-era gay men living in NYC and notable for its use of what one of my friends referred to as “Hysterical Queen-o-Vision.”
Metropolitan (1990–nevermind the other two films called “Metropolitan”) , Whit Stillman’s debutante-laden loose adaptation of Mansfield Park
and
Metropolis (1927), silent German Expressionist film about a dystopic future in which humanity is divided between those who think and those who do.
Hmm. Come to think of it, the main difference is that the Whit Stillman film is darn chatty.
The romance Before Sunset and the caper film After the Sunset were easy to confuse, being released within a few months of each other. I remember them being on the new release racks at Blockbuster at the same time.
I love the thought of Whit Stillman remaking Metropolis!
Mighty Joe Young and Meet Joe Black, which came out IIRC within a month of each other. Inevitably people intending to see one inadvertently must have went in and saw the other: “Hey what’s with the big monkey, and where’s Brad Pitt?”
Trainspotting and Transporter.
Cross of Iron and Circle of Iron.
There’s Black Sheep the comedy, and then there’s Black Sheep, the scary version (though which is which is probably relative).
An unsophisticated person might rashly and foolishly assume that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is part of the Star Wars film series.