Let's Call Tall, Slender, Attractive Females "Avatars"

I think the Hollywood has come to the conclusion that Americans are pretty much whatever the entertainment industry dictates them to be. Formulas have become rote in the process of movies. Placing script to celluloid is the science of money-making, surefire economics.

I’ve observed this insult and slander to the American movie-going population for some time, and have established my own perception for the base process.

With ease, I can be a Hollywood producer: “OK, the script is fairly romantic, so let’s make sure to market it toward woman. First, let’s choose a male character with medium acting talent and some homosexual men for comedic influence and enhanced femininity to the overall essence. Then, insert any famous, age-indeterminable actress (Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts and Emma Stone). Have them (the actor and actress, not Sandra Bullock, Stone and Roberts) fall in love (complete with a love-developing montage and Hall and Oates), deal with a conflict that pushes the two apart and then pair them back together through incredible strife. Or, give the girl a terminal illness.

I can imagine directors or producers looking over a script and deciding whether to give the girl cancer or jam some seemingly insurmountable barrier between the her and the lead actor. “Screw it Max, I can’t think of any variation of the guy effing something up irreparably, just give her SARS.” Insert a soundtrack that features the work of Damien Rice and I just made a tragic romance . . . Action!

It’s hard to decipher what movies are theater-worthy; previews never give you much beside a fake adrenaline rush. Considering I’m on a fixed income, debating whether or not to hit the AMC is a heated discussion of merits. And all we have to rely on is a preview and the dubious tomatometer.

For example, I had no idea that Avatar was an enhanced re-enactment of Pocahontas, the previews just flashed 300 million and James Cameron films over and over. My thoughts on Avatar? You know a film is bad if the only debate your friends have after the 300 million dollar movie is: “Do you think the Avatar females were hot?” Those same friends now call hot, tall girls “Avatars,” so you can see what conclusion they reached. Of course, that doesn’t say much about my friends’ intelligence, but it doesn’t say much about the quality of the film either. Investing 300 million on perfecting special effects basically screams: “Well, the storyline is shit, but we’ll enhance graphics to such a level that no one in the audience gives a fuck. Get me James Cameron!”

People talk to me about and refer me to various movies (as if I listen to their recommendations). I trust myself; and I’ve developed a dependable formula to determine whether a movie is going to be an audio/visual atrocity. I’ll share it with you in hopes that you can prevent Hollywood trickery. Here it is:

• Read the quote attributions. If the critics who praised the film are well-known, aka potential friends with someone involved with the movie or not above accepting large bags of Franklins to stamp their names and upward thumbs on a movie (Ebert and Roeper), it’s going to suck.

• If no-name newspapers and reviewers are featured in the preview, bad. Don’t trust any movie that derives its reviews from the local newspapers in Sandusky, Ohio.

• If after viewing the trailer you find yourself more confused about what the movie is, unable to decipher the genre or determine exactly who the main characters are, don’t watch it.

• If less time is spent on showing clips from the movie and more on just hyping it with zooming critic’s praise and voice-overs “Since the beginning of time . . . a big city boy and a country girl had nothing in common . . . Jennifer Lopez is . . .” you can probably cross that one out.

• Transgender comedies will always flop, especially if they include Rob Schneider.

• My number one litmus test, how many different trailers does the movie have? If the answer is one, or the answer is many that feature different sequences of the same scenes, you just saw all of the good parts, no need to waste two hours.

(That’s my biggest fear, a movie that is better in trailer form. I always feel used after paying to see those films, picturing some Hollywood executive laughing at me while he pets his Siamese cat).

Follow those and you can’t go wrong. Only you can prevent Hollywood trickery.



-Mozart