Thoughts in a Skitoliv World

There is a huge problem in Hollywood. No, I am not talking about the continuing train wreck that is Brittney Spears or even Paris Hilton getting hit in the head by a piece of ice. The problem remains that too many bad bad bad bad movies continue to get made. My current head scratching about these bad movies stems from two trailers I have seen recently; "The Cleaner" and "Alpha Dog".

The main trend right now in Hollywood is to make a bad movie and then bludgeon the populace to death with ads for this bad movie. I have currently see the trailer for both "The Cleaner" and "Alpha Dog" approximately 100,000 times a piece. "The Cleaner"’s main character appears to be Cedric the Entertainer and apparently he is a janitor who actually works for the CIA or something, oh the hilarity that ensues. "Alpha Dog" boats a cast of Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis and Justin Timberlake, and apparently deals with a kidnapping of some kid that a bunch of other kids decide to kill, lots of tension there. I have seen nothing in these trailers that makes these movies seem even remotely interesting. The problem remains, that somebody at a movie studio somewhere thought these films are good ideas; not only are they good ideas, but they are great ideas that are going to make the studio a lot of money, i.e. enough to recoup production costs and make a profit.

Maybe it is me and I just do not get it. Yet I would think that after hearing the pitch for "The Cleaner" a movie executive would throw the pitchman out of their office. The best they can come up with is a janitor that thinks he is in the CIA? Oh wait, here is the tag line for it; "I’m the black Rambo!" ,"Ok, Blambo." How long did that take to think up? Not only did they decide to make this film, butt hen they needed to cast it. I can just see the meeting to make these decisions.

Movie Honcho 1: "Ok we need a funny African-American to play ‘the cleaner’ but Bernie Mac is out because he is filming ‘Ocean’s 87′. Bill Cosby is too old and I do not think that Steve Harvey has the acting chops to really get behind the character."

Honcho 2: "I’ve got it! Cedric the Entertainer."

Honcho 1:"Oh that is brilliant, he will really bring people to see the film, just like he did for ‘Johnson Family Vacation’. Now we need a white actress to play the sex interest, hey who is hot these days?"

Honcho 2: "Well, my wife loves that ‘Desperate Housewives’ show, so how about the blonde from that, it would get the women to come see it."

Honcho 1: "You are on fire today! All we need now is another woman to play his love interest at the janitorial service and we can fill in the rest with no names."

Honcho 2: "I know Lucy Liu is desperate for work, so she should come cheap."

Viola! That is how they cast this nonsense. I am not sure which is worse, that they decided this was a good idea, or that people are going to go and pay money to see it. I am not talking about value matinee either, they will pay full price to see this garbage.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 8:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.