You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

This week, we’re looking at the trailer for the upcoming movie Not Alone … a trailer that can’t seem to decide who its audience is.

This thing spends two minutes on a pair of adults going to work, mildly flirting, looking moony-eyed, and indulging in only a few dollops of the softest of humor. Near the end of those two minutes, a looming space disaster does rear its head to inject some excitement, but even then, we don’t see the leads gearing up to save the world with a daring space mission, or making their way through danger filled streets as the world goes mad with panic. It’s just shots of them looking on, stunned.

And all this done to the mellow tunes of the classic rock song “Space Oddity”.

For those two minutes, this trailer seems to be targeted squarely at the adults in the audience. The ones who may or may not like animation as an art form, but are tired of the hyperactive, lowbrow kids fare of most animated films. Ones who can be intrigued at the prospect of an animated movie that tells a serious, mature love story, without needing Minions or talking snowmen or kung-fu pandas to entertain the kiddies …

… then the last thirty seconds of the trailer happen, and completely undo that.

Anyone whose interest was piqued by what the trailer was doing before, they’re probably gonna be disappointed as hell once the wacky, colorful, merch-friendly, goofball critters show up to turn this into a typical Illumination movie. And anyone who was bored stiff by the first two minutes of the trailer … well, the sudden pivot at the end might make them feel a little more positive about it, but spending the bulk of the ad on the boring stuff means they’re still gonna walk away thinking the bulk of the movie will be boring, too.

It just seems like a trailer designed to please no one.

Of course, it is apparently just a “teaser trailer”, designed to get the movie’s name out there before the actual, proper trailer comes later. But if a two-and-a-half minute ad is just the teaser trailer, what sort of overlong monstrosity will the main trailer end up being?