Were you watching Rashomon?
A man in a fat suit.
A man dressed as a woman
A man dressed as a fat woman
Or hell, any Tyler Perry or Wayon’s brother movie. I’m surprised the Wayon’s brothers haven’t gone under cover dressed as dogs or some nonsense.
It is Charley*'s Aunt*. A classic farce in the style of The Importance of Being Earnest. The musical version, Where’s Charley, starred Ray Bolger on Broadway and revived his career with the song “Once in Love with Amy.”
Whenever a movie trailer doesn’t really give you any idea what the movie’s about, who’s in it, or who directed… but the trailer includes nothing but a bunch of smashing reviews voiced-over the actual trailer scenes… the movie will suck.
“Roger Ebert gave this fine film 17 thumbs up!”
“Rotten Tomatoes says this flick don’t stink!”
“NYT says this will be the movie of the decade”
When you hear that, don’t even bother.
Just think what you could make by swapping first letters and then putting a space before harley’s and capitalizing it. A weird looking motorcycle, maybe?
I can get behind this. The Fifth Element is the exception that proves the Milla Jovovich rule.
Someone tell that to whoever cut the trailers I’ve been watching. It’s pretty much “two super-spies get up to sexy, double-crossing sexy fun. Sex. Did we mention they’re going to have sex?”
Most of these were just about doing drag for laughs, not about the audience being seriously expected to believe that a man could pass as a woman (and I don’t think it was believable in Tootsie).
I think there are times it has worked when the premise was taken seriously enough to really put some effort into realism (Boys Don’t Cry, The Crying Game), but I think as a comedic premise (I don’t mean Monty Python farce, but as a Mrs. Doubtfire kind of premise), it almost always fails.
I had published some Rules of Thumb for this:
When the film is advertised as a “Laff Riot” or “Zany”.
When the “stars” are second rate American stars, but the names of everyone else ends in a vowel.
If it has pictures of all the stars in a border around the edge of the poster.
If it has a simian as a co-star.
And for me- if it has a lot of smoking.
Or if it has a well-known Sceintologist or two as the star.
I have to agree about the Duplicity trailer. Whatever the movie may be, the trailer makes it look like a stupid romantic comedy, and the “sexual tension” in the trailer looks hackneyed and contrived and lets me know immediately it’s not a movie I want to see. The espionage story might actually interest me if it wasn’t for that lame romantic angle.
Also, Julia Roberts is a kill switch all by herself. I don’t think she’s ever been good in anything.
Yeah, put Julia Roberts in a trailer and I know the movie will suck. Same for Jessica Alba, minus Sin City, and I still thought that sort of sucked as well.
Anything with Nic Cage finding out the greatest secret known to man or whatever. How is that new one not National Treasure 3??
More like, when you see spectacularly good reviews, but the attribution is in such small letters that you can’t see who wrote them without a microscope, so it looks like
THE FUNNIEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR! Weezer Trowley, Dairy Producers Bulletin
A SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT IN FILMMAKING The Tricounty Red Hat Ladies’ Gabber
YOU’LL NEVER FORGET IT United Steelworkers Local No. 532 Employees blog
Will Smith saying, “Aw, hell, no!” (or however you would write that)
Also, must agree with the OP about motown songs, especially if it’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
Bad luck? Isn’t he supposed to be dead already, due to terminal concrete poisoning?
Anything featuring Hip, Urban Teens/Twentysomethings.
Anything even hinting at (a) hot lesbian scene(s), as a general rule. (Because, invariably, the scene in the trailer is all you get and/or it’s taken completely out of context.)
Swords & Sorcery.
Vampires.
Actually, I could go on for ages about this…
Anything with male black comic lead(s) pretending to be women and/or babies.
dorky white high school boys want to score with hot chick before graduation.
<<yawn>>
I will predict- they don’t get away with the money.
Or a variation of that, when the quote is something purely descriptive, and barely, if at all, complimentary…
Like “…ACTION PACKED…”. For an action movie. Well, I guess that’s a good START…
and/or white women.
And/or babies too!