Productivity

POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
Sold In
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 90 min

Morgan Spurlock is the king of gimmick documentaries that don’t really say much cept ‘Hey, look at me, I’m just like you, but with a fu-manchu mustache, and laugh at my own jokes more than you do, and I like pointing obvious things out about our world, which yer probably already well aware of, but I don’t have a strong enough slant on these generic opinions, which ultimately make my documentaries hollow and shallow, but I bet you laughed a few times!.‘  Well, that’s how we see him.  How bout you?

Anywho, his first gimmick, Super Size Me, was an easy layup, but a doc anyone of us could have made.  Oh, eating McDonalds for a month is gross AND bad for you?  BIND-MOWING!!!.  His second gimmick,  Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, was less of a gimmick and more of a Middle-Eastern clusterf$%k, even more so than the one that George W Bush created himself.  And now for the good news – his third gimmick (we didn’t see his Simpsons thing and don’t remember which segment he did in the unmemorable Freakonomics) is his BEST gimmick!  POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is not a great documentary, but it’s a really good Morgan Spurlock documentary, and for what that’s worth, it’s actually worth a lot

PWP: TGMES finds Spurlock looking into product placements placed in motion pictures and how the companies behind the products end up funding and influencing the finished… product.  Instead of digging deep, you know, the whole ‘why’ bit, he dips his toes into the pool and simply shows the ‘who’ and ‘how’, as he tries to find company partners to funnel money and products into the documentary he’s making.  It’s not so-sirprizingly all that probing, and heck, it’s not even really anything at all, but it is certainly entertaining

At first he’s has no luck getting any company on board, since his snarky reputation proceeds itself, and no one’s really jumping at the chance to be associated with his project, but miraculously, he finds some that do.  The full list of partners are: Amy’s Kitchen, The country of Aruba, Ban, Carrera Sunglasses, Hyatt, JetBlue, Mane ‘n Tail, Merrell, Mini, Movietickets.com, Old Navy, POM Wonderful, Seventh Generation Inc, Sheetz, and Thayers.  We applaud all of those companies, not for playing ball with Spurlock, but for being smart enough to having their products placed and beyond whored in the film (Mane ‘n Tale didn’t agree to be, but Spurlock loved the idea of a horse AND human shampoo that he included it for free).  Why?  Anyone who sees Sold will walk away with a better knowledge of the products presented, and may hactually be interested in purchasing them (we’re already Ban® Roll-On users 4life!!).  Products 1, Spurlock 0!!  Are you sold yet?

Ads By Subtraction: his best diversion within the doc is his trip to São Paulo, Brazil, a city which banned advertisements in public spaces.  this would never fly in America, and that’s what’s so wrong AND so right with us/US!!

flickr РṢo Paulo No Logo

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Sold is boughten in limited release today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed, but Morgan aint…