No, seriously, thanks… detailing every major plot point of that movie on the box of the DVD prevented me from buying it, which is probably a good thing.
The movie looked vaguely interesting, perhaps worth the $5.88 Wal-Mart was charging for it. I read the back of the box, which proceeded to tell the whole story of the movie, except for the ending. Hey, thanks for saving me the trouble! Now I know that the film is rather trite and predictable, so much so that even the “surprising” ending is pretty much a given. Saved me the trouble of buying it, or even spending a couple hours watching it.
So wait. A company decided to describe it’s product in a way that saved you money. That’s it? You don’t own stock in the company or get a commission when the thing sells or your brother-in-law wasn’t in the thing so you want it to be successful? You saved a few bucks?
Seriously, I just though it was a really stupid way to try to sell a movie… I’ve worked advertising, and my feeling is that nobody would want to watch this movie after reading the box. No reason to!
Well, look at it this way: at least there was a plot. For $5.88 all you could reasonably expect was that there was really a disk inside.
K-Mart had one of their (notice the one part) going-up-in-flames sales and I decided to check out the DVD selections in hopes of getting the typical K-Mart steal.
Yep. Somebody beat me to it. Not a box had the disk inside.
And there’s some mystery to why K-Mart is staring at the stars from a prone position?
I HATE that! On book backs, too - so I go to Amazon and look at the ratings of books recommended to me, without looking at the reviews or summary - based upon the stars only, I will purchase the book, either from Amazon or B&N - when I get it in my hot little hands, I proceed to tape post-its all over the book back, then I start reading!
They’re starting to do that in movie previews now, I mean showing the scenes in chronological order and like a mini-plot. Swimfan comes to mind. Not that I would watch it anyway, but I really appreciate them telling me the story so there wasn’t even a thought of temptation, like there is now with 28 Days.
Actually, I read somewhere that that ending is actually much closer to the original novel’s ending than the original movie’s was, replacing Washington DC with the (French) author’s city of Paris.
Then again, no one said you ALWAYS had to like the novel better than the movie…
