I'm Not Sure

I'm not sure, exactly, how I feel about the Michigan woman who is suing film distributors because when she went to see the movie Drive it was not what the trailer had led her to believe it was.

On the one hand, I sympathize. There are many trailers which have made movies look good when they are not. Lately I've been skipping a good 80 percent of what hits the theaters today regardless of the trailer, because I either a) am pretty convinced the movie is going to stink or b) have a negative desire to see it whether it stinks or not. In the first category we can put...well, all too many movies out today. In the second, we can put movies like Rise of the Planet of the Apes or Inglorious Basterds. The former's combination of the well-known Planet of the Apes storyline with hints of the (ironically simian-less) 12 Monkeys loses its appeal for me because I have seen both of those movies and if I want to watch them again I will. Maybe Brad Pitt's a hoot in IB and Christoph Waltz is amazing and after all, it is about defeating Nazis. But it features Eli Roth, and I have previously said that in order to get an amount of money small enough to match what I would pay to see Roth, you need only collect the copper under your fingernail after you scrape it once along the edge of a penny. So whether their trailers were great and accurate or poor and misleading, I don't care (There is a subset of this second set; movies which I will see no matter what the trailer looks like. The Expendables and next year's The Avengers are a couple of those movies).

But on the other hand, the woman is basically suing the distributors for successfully advertising their movie. I can see many judges being sympathetic to her, especially if they have seen a movie, but I don't think their sympathy will translate into a judgment in her favor. If the trailer had, for example, been made up entirely of scenes that weren't in the movie, or featured a star who wasn't actually in the movie, then she might manage a false advertising claim. But just, "The movie wasn't what the trailer made me think it would be?" I think you're out of luck, lady. Bust out a Netflix subscription, learn where TCM or Fox Movie Channel is on your television. You'll be happier in the long run.

(H/T Yeah Right)