Trailers. We’ve all seen them, and we’ve all been excited by them. Marketing has never been easier, the average person is online in some form for 27.3 hours a day (might not be true), that’s like handcuffing a gazelle to a lion. You can’t go on Facebook or Twitter or Myspace (is that still about?) without seeing the relentless promotion of whatever shit film is coming out this month. It’s sadistic.
If they’re not seeking us, we’re seeking them. Trailers have become an event, they attract as much attention as the finished film does, if not more. All this buzz and excitement for a two minute or less montage. They’re not even accurate representations, some are audacious enough to show footage that’s not even in the film (see Iron Man 2, Predators, Inception), promising something they can never deliver.
And are we the public fooled by this cynical promotion? Yes. Yes we are. If you have ever uttered “that looks good” after seeing a Saw or Final Destination trailer then they have already won, they own you, they made Insidious because of you, “that looks good”, you said that didn’t you? Then you went to see Insidious, gave them your money, and they own you. All they have to do is film a frightened cinema audience, show it to you, and you’ll give them your money. I’ve forgotten my point.
I have seen two trailers this week that have disgusted me, and after much “research” I’ve compiled a list of trailers and films to avoid, if not only for myself.
Yeah yeah, it’s cool to hate on Twilight, “you don’t understand it”, I fucking do. I genuinely thought it was over after three films, I thought we were done, and the first alarming thing about the Breaking Dawn trailer is the subtitle, “part 1”. Part 1? How can this be two films long? How can the entire franchise be two films long? This trailer has generated a lot of excitement from the “Twihards” (I’m assuming it has) but not everyone is pleased: “well first of all theyve got one bit wrong, the wedding should be INSIDE with bella coming down the stairs at the cullens house. and theyve got it OUTSIDE. they better not ruin this book. because it is in? my opinion the best one!”
What’s most annoying about this trailer isn’t the fact it’s a Twilight film, it’s the sense that it’s not really a film at all. You can assume the stupid montage of invitations is purely for the trailer and what does that leave you? Lots of kissing. Anything else? NO. Well, Taylor Lautner takes off his shirt AGAIN. Oh, there seems to be a fight somewhere, and there’s a pregnancy, but does this warrant the overdramatic music? Or even a whole film? This looks essentially like a goth Juno, and it’s irritating that it treats itself like it’s Lord of the fucking Rings.
So there’s this girl with a dragon tattoo? I haven’t got a fucking clue what this franchise is about. I haven’t actually met anyone who has read the “best selling” books or seen the original films, and after seeing this trailer, I’m even less sure what it’s about. Is it about murders? Because the only murder I saw was of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant song. Daniel Craig is in it so it might be a James Bond film right?
The whole trailer consists of insanely fast cuts so you don’t have time to realise that any of it is incredibly dull. There are just some old men sitting at a table at some point. Then there’s Daniel Craig, then there’s some photos, then there’s this girl, then there’s the irritating tag line of “the feel bad movie of Christmas”. How about just giving us six words that describe the fucking plot?
So it’s four guys walking down a street. You can hardly call this a trailer really. It’s not going to attract anyone unfamiliar with The Inbetweeners already, nor will it entice those who have got bored with the show. Perhaps it’s a good thing that no footage has been shown to us yet. Most of its comedy is shock and awe, and doesn't hold the same value a second time round, much like The Hangover.
What’s worrying about this “trailer” however is that each character’s personality can be summed up by the stupid expressions on their faces. Will posh, Simon neurotic, Neil stupid, Jay perverted. Will the film continue with these cardboard personalities just as the series did, or will it develop their characters into…well, characters? As a possible last “hurrah” for the boys it would be good to see something more than nudity and the repeated use of the word “clunge”.
That's it, goodbye.
Showing posts with label The Inbetweeners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Inbetweeners. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 June 2011
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Clungens and Dragons
A list of TV shows that at one time I rather liked:
Heroes
Prison Break
24
CSI
Family Guy
Scrubs
The O.C
Chucklevision
Joanie Loves Chachi
And now I fear that The Inbetweeners will soon be added to that list. When The Inbetweeners hit our screens in 2008 is was a breath of fresh air, kind of like Skins but good. I say that but I only watched Skins the one time and it felt like an expensive episode of Hollyoaks trying too hard to be cool and not capturing anything remotely realistic about my adolescence. We can’t all have grown up making films with Hugh Grant.
The Inbetweeners on the other hand wasn’t trying to be cool, it was trying to be funny, and it succeeded. It wasn’t totally akin to how I remember school but that didn’t really matter because the interaction between the four protagonists was often amusing and to an extent a realistic depiction of four teenage boys. Mix that with some embarrassing situations and you have quite an entertaining show.
Unfortunately the sharpness and wit of the first series (at least I remember there being some sharp wit) was mostly gone by the start of the second, replaced by a relentless barrage of crude obscenities. Saying clunge the tenth time is not as funny as the first time. The embarrassing situations are still there however, but they seem to be relying on them more and more as the series progresses, and if these situations don’t work, the episode generally fails. They don’t always have to be vulgar and disgusting either, Frank Spencer never got his dick out in public.
I was part of a four strong group of “inbetweeners” at school, the geekiest part though, and I no doubt dramatically lowered the coolness of the other three. Looking back I was punching above my weight, I still am. School was endlessly awkward for me, and usually consisted of trying not to get an erection, inevitably getting an erection, being too shy and embarrassed to talk to anyone, mocked for being shit at football (wasn‘t even that bad), bullied for being small and quiet, and insulted by my own friends. It was never about really embarrassing situations you could base a sitcom around, it was a culmination of all the little awkward things that made school so hard and humiliating, and maybe this is just me, but I spent most of my time narrowly avoiding embarrassing situations every day, possibly even every hour, rather than actually having them.
The Inbetweeners should in my opinion focus on the smaller things that make adolescence such a nightmare because the bigger things like shitting yourself in an exam or exposing a testicle in front of an audience don’t happen in real life, if they did you would never go back to school, you’d probably jump off a bridge.
The characters in The Inbetweeners have become very two dimensional. Jay, against all odds is the most realistic character in the show, there were dozens of people like him at school endlessly talking about sex, overcompensating for the fact that they weren’t having sex, as if everyone expects a 13 year old to be “knee deep in clunge” and you've failed at life if you're still a virgin before your SATS. I never understood that need to show off your (fake) sexual affluence. I remember one time in year 9 maths that someone said that a tit wank is better from a woman with small tits. Totally useless information for a 14 year old like me, or for the cunt who said it, I don’t even know if he was right either (answers on a postcard please). Another time in what must have been year 7, someone said that a woman should never be at the bottom of a 69 because they would choke. I absolutely hated these people, who wouldn’t?
Simon has the neurotic sensibilities that I assume a lot of people once had, or still have, which in a way helps you empathise with him and makes his experiences totally relatable. Will and Neil are probably the weakest of the four. Once you get that Will is intelligent, a square, and hates idiots, and that Neil is just an idiot, there’s not much comedy to come from them, and while Jay might be realistic, he says the same thing over and over, and it’s getting pretty tiresome now.
With the interactions between the four protagonists becoming much weaker and repetitive, it’s a shame there is such a little ensemble to mix things up, it’s like they go to the world’s smallest school. Any recurring characters are also quite two dimensional often showing only one personality trait, Donovan for example is supposedly hard, and every time he’s on screen we know exactly what he’s going to say.
Of course I’m the minority here, the show’s popularity seems to be at an all time high, probably because it’s so crude and Jay says minge and clunge a lot. It will only get more popular the more it uses mindless profanities because there are so many people who talk like that out there. Peep Show proves that you can be rude and intelligent at the same time and make something as small and simple as walking down a street or dancing as one of the most embarrassing things in the world. The problem with The Inbetweeners is that it’s sinking too low too fast, how is it going to get worse for them? Awkward moment after awkward moment only numbs the whole experience until it no longer seems that awkward. And we find things embarrassing because of what people will think of us, and as the cast of the show is so small, we cannot see the repercussions of their actions to the fully embarrassing extent that would happen in real life.
While the show may still have its moments now and again, the direction it is taking is not ftw (as geeks would say), maybe not for its audience, but for me certainly. With two dimensional characters, clunge, clunge, fucking clunge, and relying on the sit rather than the com, The Inbetweeners is not the show it used to be.
Heroes
Prison Break
24
CSI
Family Guy
Scrubs
The O.C
Chucklevision
Joanie Loves Chachi
And now I fear that The Inbetweeners will soon be added to that list. When The Inbetweeners hit our screens in 2008 is was a breath of fresh air, kind of like Skins but good. I say that but I only watched Skins the one time and it felt like an expensive episode of Hollyoaks trying too hard to be cool and not capturing anything remotely realistic about my adolescence. We can’t all have grown up making films with Hugh Grant.
The Inbetweeners on the other hand wasn’t trying to be cool, it was trying to be funny, and it succeeded. It wasn’t totally akin to how I remember school but that didn’t really matter because the interaction between the four protagonists was often amusing and to an extent a realistic depiction of four teenage boys. Mix that with some embarrassing situations and you have quite an entertaining show.
Unfortunately the sharpness and wit of the first series (at least I remember there being some sharp wit) was mostly gone by the start of the second, replaced by a relentless barrage of crude obscenities. Saying clunge the tenth time is not as funny as the first time. The embarrassing situations are still there however, but they seem to be relying on them more and more as the series progresses, and if these situations don’t work, the episode generally fails. They don’t always have to be vulgar and disgusting either, Frank Spencer never got his dick out in public.
I was part of a four strong group of “inbetweeners” at school, the geekiest part though, and I no doubt dramatically lowered the coolness of the other three. Looking back I was punching above my weight, I still am. School was endlessly awkward for me, and usually consisted of trying not to get an erection, inevitably getting an erection, being too shy and embarrassed to talk to anyone, mocked for being shit at football (wasn‘t even that bad), bullied for being small and quiet, and insulted by my own friends. It was never about really embarrassing situations you could base a sitcom around, it was a culmination of all the little awkward things that made school so hard and humiliating, and maybe this is just me, but I spent most of my time narrowly avoiding embarrassing situations every day, possibly even every hour, rather than actually having them.
The Inbetweeners should in my opinion focus on the smaller things that make adolescence such a nightmare because the bigger things like shitting yourself in an exam or exposing a testicle in front of an audience don’t happen in real life, if they did you would never go back to school, you’d probably jump off a bridge.
The characters in The Inbetweeners have become very two dimensional. Jay, against all odds is the most realistic character in the show, there were dozens of people like him at school endlessly talking about sex, overcompensating for the fact that they weren’t having sex, as if everyone expects a 13 year old to be “knee deep in clunge” and you've failed at life if you're still a virgin before your SATS. I never understood that need to show off your (fake) sexual affluence. I remember one time in year 9 maths that someone said that a tit wank is better from a woman with small tits. Totally useless information for a 14 year old like me, or for the cunt who said it, I don’t even know if he was right either (answers on a postcard please). Another time in what must have been year 7, someone said that a woman should never be at the bottom of a 69 because they would choke. I absolutely hated these people, who wouldn’t?
Simon has the neurotic sensibilities that I assume a lot of people once had, or still have, which in a way helps you empathise with him and makes his experiences totally relatable. Will and Neil are probably the weakest of the four. Once you get that Will is intelligent, a square, and hates idiots, and that Neil is just an idiot, there’s not much comedy to come from them, and while Jay might be realistic, he says the same thing over and over, and it’s getting pretty tiresome now.
With the interactions between the four protagonists becoming much weaker and repetitive, it’s a shame there is such a little ensemble to mix things up, it’s like they go to the world’s smallest school. Any recurring characters are also quite two dimensional often showing only one personality trait, Donovan for example is supposedly hard, and every time he’s on screen we know exactly what he’s going to say.
Of course I’m the minority here, the show’s popularity seems to be at an all time high, probably because it’s so crude and Jay says minge and clunge a lot. It will only get more popular the more it uses mindless profanities because there are so many people who talk like that out there. Peep Show proves that you can be rude and intelligent at the same time and make something as small and simple as walking down a street or dancing as one of the most embarrassing things in the world. The problem with The Inbetweeners is that it’s sinking too low too fast, how is it going to get worse for them? Awkward moment after awkward moment only numbs the whole experience until it no longer seems that awkward. And we find things embarrassing because of what people will think of us, and as the cast of the show is so small, we cannot see the repercussions of their actions to the fully embarrassing extent that would happen in real life.
While the show may still have its moments now and again, the direction it is taking is not ftw (as geeks would say), maybe not for its audience, but for me certainly. With two dimensional characters, clunge, clunge, fucking clunge, and relying on the sit rather than the com, The Inbetweeners is not the show it used to be.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Shitcom
Us Brits are funny you know, even the Americans admit it. Turn your TV on today and there is little proof of this. We supposedly have a rich history of great sitcoms (or in general: comedy shows, whatever you want to call them), but it appears that we are resting on our laurels and are content on writing what can only be described as shitcoms.
While we have made many great shows, it is becoming ever increasingly apparent that we’re not that funny anymore. Yes, there are some absolutely brilliant shows still running like Peep Show, The IT Crowd, and The Inbetweeners, but these never get the recognition they deserve. Perhaps Britain’s sense of humour has shifted somewhat.
The last two comedy shows to have really taken the Great Kingdom by storm have been Little Britain and Gavin and Stacey. This suggests to me that we bloody well chuffing love a good catchphrase. “I’m a lady”, “What’s occurring?”, ha ha ha, how we all laugh. A catchphrase is essentially regurgitating the same punch line over and over and over and over again, and when you start to hear these being repeated by what can only be described as morons it induces long and painful brain haemorrhages…for me at least.
Take the latest Nationwide adverts, we can all admit that Little Britain was funny (the first series at least), but we can also come to terms with the fact that we’ve had enough of it. Who is laughing at these adverts? And why did Nationwide think they would make us want to bank with them? Probably because they are a thousand times less annoying than any Halifax advert in the last ten years. I don’t want my bank to make me laugh, I want them to look after my money. You wouldn’t ask a clown to look after your savings, you’d tell it to fuck off.
The truth is that no one is laughing at Little Britain anymore, because we are still too busy laughing at Gavin and Stacey. While it was admittedly written very well in the sense that it had a good narrative, it wasn’t really that funny. It is fundamentally about spotting things that people do in real life, and laughing at them. It worked best when watched with someone Welsh (or vice versa), but I doubt that many English homes are sold with a complimentary Welsh person. The strange myth that James Corden is hilarious is also something I cannot fathom. We always have a pair of celebrities we love at any given time, and at the moment it is Corden and Cheryl fucking Cole. The problem with Corden, is that he is just quite cheery and chirpy, and doesn’t have an opinion of anything. Having been one of the many unlucky souls to see his World Cup show, I saw a horrific interview between Corden and former England El Capitan John Terry. Instead of asking John Terry some pretty darn important questions like “why did you sleep with your team mate’s girlfriend”, Corden went on to ask such monumental questions as “what time does the England team go to bed?” Forget Frost/Nixon, this was the real deal!
I digress, this rant is all about the state of British comedy, and ignoring the “nation’s favourite” comedies, you have to turn to the other poison that is slowly killing our reputation, and that is BBC Three. BBC Three is a finely oiled machine, exceeding in giving us fucking awful comedies (and anything else it broadcasts). One example is a show that I regrettably laid my eyes upon, Off The Hook. I envy you if you haven’t seen or heard of it. Looking like BBC’s answer to Skins and The Inbetweeners, Off The Hook followed some University student losers going about University life. This was void of…well everything. Without a doubt the worst thing I have ever seen, and the BBC will keep on commissioning shows like this, because they always have. My biggest question is “what were the writers thinking?” Surely they’d have some inkling that it was worse than shit?
It’s not all bad though, we are halfway through the fourth series of The IT Crowd, and it’s still pretty darn good. Mitchell and Webb return next week, and The Inbetweeners and Peep Show will be here before the end of the year. Why can’t all comedies be like these? Peep Show has remained consistently funny for six series (while most other shows rarely go beyond a third), yet it has never attracted a huge audience. This is probably because not everyone gets it, and this is a shame because we should have more shows like it, rather than the atrocities that are conjured up on a regular basis.
It’s sad that I can only be positive for a short paragraph, but that is the current state we are in, and we have to do something about it before the US can say they are funnier than us, and they probably already can. Even House is funnier than the majority of our shitcoms, and if we don’t act fast it will be one more thing the Yanks beat us at. What will we have left? Snootiness?
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