Did you ever see a preview and think: “That cannot possibly be a thing?” Like you are watching some sort of quick ad for a sketch comedy show, or an Onion style take on a movie trailer? I would be genuinely surprised if you have not as there are usually like 3/4 of these per year for me. Just for clarification sake I am not talking about movies that are weird for the sake of weird, or super cheap B-movie stuff where they work with what they got, those trailers happen all the time.
No I am speaking of trailers that either seem like they should not exist because they don’t seem to have any kind of target audience, or maybe they are full of bad decisions or things they show which will not generate any kind of excitement for the movies they ‘sell’. Or maybe the trailer accurately shows the movie but you see it and just wonder… who asked for this? Or alternatively who would see this and be excited. I am not talking down on these weird phenomenon either, often when I see one of these trailers it does make me a little curious to see the movie because sometimes those movies are great (see previous weekly movie thread discussion about how big risks can yield big rewards)!. Whether I think it will be an entertaining train wreck or maybe my movie sense tingles and I hope or believe this will be great somehow often I am at least intrigued usually either is equally possible.
Perhaps a bit too much preamble to lead into one of this week’s new releases: Better Man. Which is a Robbie Williams biopic and for some reason he is played by a CGI monkey person and seems to be the only monkey person in the movie. I’m not going to knock Robbie at all because I don’t like doing that, but he did not seem to be the musical biopic the world needed and also why a monkey exactly (I had to do a small amount of research so I do know the actual reason… it doesn’t really make much sense for me but I am not one to argue creative choices)? But as weird as I find this trailer and concept, it did it’s job fairly well because the result is I am somewhat interested in seeing this just to see if the movie plays it straight up the whole way through and what that would look like (although based on the visuals I see in my head this is tied into the Planet of the Apes universe and if that were actually true it could have a spectacular twist ending).
It being a new year I thought I would go back to the idea of a choose your own adventure prompt: A/ Is there any movie trailer you refused to believe at first, or at least went Seriously !? or B/ Who would be your pick for a less high profile biopic (music or otherwise)? Would you try to gimmick up the concept like Better Man? I’m opting to answer part A/ this week. Cats kind of did this for me. I watched that trailer and couldnt believe there was an entire movie of singing cats that looked like… that (and that isn’t even accounting for the mythical butthole cut). I dont have a good answer for prompt B/, but I think more people should know about Corpsegrinder, the singer for the heavy metal band Cannibal Corpse whose hobby is while the band is on tour he goes to arcades and plays the claw game. He is apparently quite good, wins a lot of stuffies and donates them to the local children’s hospital. This may not be full biopic material but it is pretty cool so maybe a short film or documentary.