Sometimes, reading the back of a movie box is good, like when it identifies a certain actor. Sometimes, it is just confusing or badly worded.
My personal pet peeve is any one that uses the words “wacky” or “romp”. When was the last time you used either of those words in a real conversation? Or “bloodcurdling”. Or even “diabolical”?
Wacky just sounds like a porn star’s name. “Hi, I’m Wacky McStifferton!”
What’s your most/least favorite movie description from the back of the box?
From the back of Mission Impossible’s box:
“An action-packed thrill-ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat until it blows you right out of it!”
Not from the back of the box, but the TV listings:
“Barmaid and friend help man with amnesia hunt his wife’s killer.”
Okay, this is obviously recognizeable as Memento, but what thinking person could possible summarize that movie in that way?
The box for Eat, Drink, Man, Woman cracks me up – the word “sex” appears several times, as do things like “hot” and “erotic”. As it’s a foreign film, there is also no MPAA rating. I can only imagine the disappointment of people who rent this movie hoping for porn, only to discover that it’s a family-friendly romantic comedy!
Yes, the EDMW description was hilariously inappropriate.
My least favorite non-movie-specific description is “a taut psychological thriller!” Why is this combination of words so overused? It’s not like there are no easy alternatives.
There’s a small movie called “The Operator”.
It’s about a sleazy young Texas lawyer who mistakenly makes an enemy of a phone operator who systematically destroys his life (but really she’s doing it to help him become a better person, It’s very Zen).
The marketing company insisted that the movie be sold as a thriller and wanted all the press to say “erotic thriller”. There’s nothing erotic about the movie. There’s one sex scene, a little innuendo but nothing overtly erotic. The only exception could be that the phone operator is never shown fully on camera. You only see her from behind and then in long shots. But the movie teases you with glimpses of her.
The director had to get them to settle on “Zen Thriller”. And that way, he says, it’s only half lying.
Did you know that the marketing people for THE SIXTH SENSE didn’t want to “give away” the fact that the boy saw dead people? Talk about missing the point.
“When I see a book that’s supposed to be ‘gut-crunching suspense’ I always ask myself, do I sincerely want my guts crunched this week?” -William DeAndrea
Fifteen Iguana
“Thrillride of the summer”
ugh, makes me want to puke. (no pun intended btw)
There’s always those B-movie, genre-imitating movie whose box descriptions invariably say:
“In the tradition of…<insert name of good movie here>”
This was a newspaper listing for a TV showing of “A Place in the Sun”:
“Boy loves rich girl, takes poor girl for boat ride.”
Well, at least it doesn’t give away the ending.
The description on the back of my German paperback edition of “The Godfather” says:
“Little Vito is the only survivor of a massacre in his hometown in Sicily. He flees to New York and with cunning, violence and corruption he becomes the Godfather of the American Mafia. But he is obsessed by only one thought: He wants revenge for the murder of his family…”
Obviously the person who wrote this didn’t even bother to read the book before writing about it.
Do they normally read the book before writing the blurb?
My current peeve is on the Blade movie box. It says he’s facing an ‘omnipotent’ vampire lord. Well, that’ll be a short movie, then.
I have a somewhat irrational hatred for the quote they use on the cover of the newer Terry Pratchett paperbacks:
Sometimes the blurbs quote reviews that say nothing good or bad about the movie, just name the genre:
“An action adventure!” - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Any quote of less than three words, especially one with ellipses. Such as, “Good…movie!” -Roger Ebert. Almost inevitably, the whole quote is something like “Good lord in heaven, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a miserable pile of excrement passed off as an actual movie!”
I have an old 1960’s paperback edition of the Ellery Queen mystery Cat of Many Tails; the cover art and the blurb on the back, which refers to “ladies of the night,” suggest that this is an erotic crime thriller about a prostitute murderer.
Except that it’s not. Only one of the victims is a prostitute. The others include a nurse, a wealthy socialite (both female), a recluse (male), a blue-collar worker (male), a bedridden invalid (female), and a college student (male). The point of the story is that New York is terrorized by the Cat because anybody could be killed next.
Back of the Highlander 2 box:
“The smartest sci-fi thriller since Blade Runner!”
er… there are so many things wrong with that statement.
What gets me is the video boxes where they’re describing the cast and director. They’ll always list the latest and stupidest film that the talent has made, rather than anything of quality – “from director Francis Ford Coppola (Jack, The Rainmaker)” – and no way will they tell you anyone was in a TV program no matter how good, since it’s obviously more proof of talent that Jennifer Aniston was in the dire Picture Perfect than in Friends.
Yeah, it is obnoxious, but at least they’re not splashing that recommendation from Piers Anthony all over the front covers anymore. Sheesh.
A friend of mine has a hilarious edition of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey with a cover and jacket summary that make the book seem like exactly the sort of schlocky gothic romance/thriller that Northanger Abbey spoofs. There’s a little section of the Republic of Pemberley devoted to it here: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/nhabgoth.html