“You OVERzealous Sonofa…”
Posted on | February 5, 2005 at 5:30 pm | Comments Off
I haven’t been to the movies for a few weeks, and the reason can be summed up in one word: Hitch. If I have to sit through the trailer for that movie ever again, I’m afraid I’m going to throw my pretzel at the screen. It’s like every single movie I’ve seen since late last year has had the Hitch trailer attached to it. And now TV commercials for it are flooding the airwaves. It’s not like it looks like a totally awful movie (though it’s definitely not something I’d want to see; reasons below) – it looks like a typical romantic comedy, and it stars Will Smith as a “dating doctor” who of course has trouble with his own dating life. But that trailer… I know every scene, every joke, by heart. I’ve found myself mouthing the dialog along with the actors. I didn’t think the jokes were that funny the first time (aside from the jet-ski bit), and they certainly don’t get any funnier as time goes on. And yet, the audience seems to eat it all up and laughs uproariously. Am I the only one who has seen it time after time after time? Or the only one who fails to appreciate how great the jokes are and how they get better over time?
And really, I find something offensive about it. Large parts of the trailer focus on how doughy, uncoordinated, shy white guy Kevin James, who seems to be romancing a hottie who in the real world would not be interested in him, has to be shown by suave Will Smith how everything he ever knew about women and dating and living in the world at all is wrong, wrong, wrong. He’s a caricature, and not a very interesting one. And we know that in the end, he’s going to find true love anyway, because of (or in spite) of Will’s influence.
I think the fact that Sony is pushing this movie so hard yet dumping it in the February near-Dead Zone movie window means that they know it’s a dog but they’re going to try to get a lot of people in there for the opening weekend. By the time it opens, everyone will feel that they’ve already seen it, so they might as well go see it for real.
I can’t wait for this movie to hit the theaters and be gone. But then I’ll have to sit through the commercials for the DVD.
I’ve seen the Hitch trailer almost as much I’ve seen the Constantine trailer. But I don’t mind the Constantine trailer, despite Keanu Reeves, because it’s based on Hellblazer, a comic book I read and enjoy. And because the trailer actually has some interesting visual elements in it and moves fast. I’m not sure how much I’m looking forward to the movie itself, since I’m still pretty upset they’ve made John Constantine an American instead of a Brit, and set it in Los Angeles instead of London. The whole character of Constantine has too much to do with him being British, and is one of the reasons the character and comic have been around for as long as they have. In my mind, Constantine is one of the greatest anti-heroes created in the last 25 years. But I may be able to enjoy the movie if I can separate it from the comics, and if some of that great character shows through in spite of the transplantation. It looks well done, at least. Unlike Hitch.
Latre.