The movie from the blog title (I refuse to even type it out again lest Google register any more buzz for this movie) is just so bad that about 20 minutes in I decided to make it an exercise.

100 years from now, in the textbooks, e-books or whatever they’re teaching from in the marketing classes of the 22nd century, they will show this movie as a showpiece of marketing in the early 21st century.

The whole movie plays like an especially bad episode of Beverly Hills 90210 — bad acting and unlikely scenarios mixed in with commercials every 10 minutes. I tried to keep track of as many as I could so that writing this blog post could be thought of as making really sour lemonade from one lemon of a movie:

- constant references to myspace (incidentally none for facebook), complete with bit of the movie that looks like webinar tutorial sessions for how to perform actions on myspace for those that have just escaped from under a rock and have decided to spend their first hours in this movie.

- naturally, someone (Drew Barrymore’s character) in this movie is a hipster creative type, and they use a Mac. Yep, we get it. People who use Macs are cool and artistic. Can we all go home now? Ironically enough, she does (print) ad sales. Come on, Apple, can’t you be more creative than that? Expand from your captive target demographic already, there are plenty of other segments of American society that have debt money to burn buying overpriced and overmarketed computers

- a Crest whitestrips ad so flagrant I almost thought i’d been transported back to the 15 minutes of commercials before the torture movie started

- almost as if to draw attention to it out of sheer irony, Justin Long, Mr. Mac, has a nice Dell promo spot

But I want to discuss in more detail the most sophisticated and effective  promo of the movie — EA’s attempt to not just product-place NBA Live, but to actively shape opinion about who plays console games.

A much more subtle breed of advertising

One of the more absurd scenes of the movie involves a clearly intentional dead-ringer of Gisele Bundchen (i.e. a Hot Girl ™ ) playing NBA Live with Justin Long’s character until 3am, at which point she high-fives him for the great game, and makes her exit, alone, into the 3am night of Baltimore. Yes, I did say Baltimore.

The most important signal being sent to the men and women in the audience: Hot Girls ™ can play video games! It’s okay!

Los Angeles needs to eat. And with the movie and music rackets markets bringing in far less fat revenues from the good old days, gaming is the only growth industry LA has going for it these days, and if it means showing Hot Girls playing NBA Live or other games, so be it. Welcome to the New World Order.

My projection: Gaming in 2020 is going to be decidedly more “cool” than it is now. By 2020 the movie industry / gaming industry differential, already now in gaming’s favour, will be heavily skewed towards gaming. The living, breathing celebrities we all worship will in large part be replaced by virtual characters.  Think I’m crazy? Think about the people that used IM and email in 1995. In those days I was mocked and teased for sitting in front of the computer and chatting with people remotely. Who uses it today? At the very least, celebrities will be commoditized much more than they are now (note the disposable stars from the reality TV trend) .

I could continue discussing but I think you get the idea.

Next time you pay $10-12 for a movie ticket, think about the fact that you’re often paying to watch a 90-120 minute commercial or brain-sculpting exercise. Movie-goers should collectively demand either a stop to this practice, or lower ticket prices, because I sure as hell don’t want to watch Hollywood have its cake and eat it too.