The Sisters Brothers
While I’m very much looking forward to this movie, the trailer for it is tone deaf. It has the rhythms of a comedy trailer and even seems to pause for laughs (like when Phoenix falls off his horse) but doesn’t seem to understand what a joke is. I’ve watched this trailer several times in theaters and it never gets a laugh. The moment when John C. Reilly punches Joaquin Phoenix instead of slapping him should get a big laugh and instead it always gets silence. The damn thing opens with them terrorizing a woman who we sympathize with more than them then triumphant music plays as they burn her house down. How are we supposed to side with them? This doesn’t make them fun bad boys in the way the trailer thinks it does. There is a fun, off-beat western somewhere buried underneath all this. This particular ad does a poor job of explaining or selling it however.
Smallfoot
At least this trailer nails its concept. A yeti goes in search of the mystical “Smallfoot.” Unfunny jokes and a saccharine song about freedom make this one hard to sit through repeatedly. At least there is original music in this movie and not just the rehashed jukebox of oldies the constantly get repackaged and sold to kids in so many movies (Sing, Ella Enchanted, Strange Magic). This is another movie where the trailer overwhelms you with the voice cast as if the sheer number of celebrities will somehow cover up a substandard plot. If you want a cast of thousands, rent It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.