Yes, No, Maybe So... (a mystery movie)
Wednesday, November 27, 2013 at 8:00PM Dancin' Dan here, ready to play our favorite trailer game with a bit of a twist. Those of you who saw Catching Fire this past weekend were treated to what is surely one of the weirdest and worst trailers in recent memory... although you might not have realized the full extent of its awfulness until the very end, when the title flashes across the screen.
Let's break it down... chronologically this time.
YES
Things start off well enough... a pretty poor boy (Alex Pettyfer) and a pretty rich girl (Gabriella Wilde) meet-cute/creepy as pretty music plays...
Things get darker. That brooding, haunting cover of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" kicks in, the hand-scrawled text starts talking about saying goodbye to innocence, and you're suddenly thinking there might be more to this than meets the eye. You're just waiting for the other shoe to drop (like in that killer trailer for Wes Craven's Red Eye, remember that one?)...
NO
...but it never does!
Instead, there's lots of vague, vague talk from the girl's father (Bruce Greenwood, paying his mortgage) about how he just knows this boy is hiding a wicked past - in other words, what every rich girl's father does in every movie ever.
More vague, vague talk from the boy about how that's all behind him, and hey, it wasn't a crime anyway (Okay, that wasn't quite what you were expecting...)
Cue every standard teenage romantic drama beat: slow undressing, "I've Never Done This Before", running through fields, "You Drive Me Crazy", curling up in the back of a pickup truck, "I Only Want To Be With You", punching, "Stay Away From My Daughter!", crying, "WHY DO YOU HATE MY BOYFRIEND, DADDY?!?", more crying, "WHY WOULD YOU LIE TO ME?!?"
And finally... the title.
*needle scratch*
WHAT? Endless Love? The Brooke Shields/Martin Hewitt-starring, Franco Zeffirelli-directed cheesefest from 1981 that we get to call "The Oscar-Nominated Endless Love" because of that earworm Diana Ross/Lionel Richie duet?
THAT Endless Love?
And all of a sudden, everything about the trailer seems even more miscalculated than before! For the first minute, there's that thrilling sense that this isn't going somewhere expected, and then not only does it go everywhere you might expect, it turns out this is a property that we already know...
MAYBE SO
But... um... Alex Pettyfer is pretty?
Basically, I got nothing. If I wasn't a NO before seeing the trailer, I sure as hell am now!
However, compliments are due to the people who put this together. See, I had only a vague knowledge that this film existed before seeing this, and now, it's all I can think about.
What say you?
Reader Comments (16)
This looks hilarious. And Gabriella Wilde may be pretty but she's a TERRIBLE actress. She was so bad in the awful Carrie remake. She's got the acting skills of a chinchilla.
Meh.They're not as pretty as Shields and Hewitt.
Endless Love is an Oscar-nominated film, not winning. Arthur's theme won that year!
I read the book by Scott Spencer that the original movie was based on and thought it was horrible. It felt so contrived and unreal, with no one acting like anyone in real life would act.
Then I saw the movie on cable and it was actually worse than the book. Before I saw the movie, I would have thought that impossible.
And now they are remaking it? I'm betting it's almost as successful as the remakes of Footloose and Fame.
Man, that book was bad.
When Gabriella Wilde first appears I thought to myself this must be the new Amanda Seifried replacement now that she's a decade away from teenage roles.
I must second the correction, Endless Love did not win the Oscar that year, it was Arthur.
The first time I saw this was in front of Carrie, which made it seem even likelier that it was a horror film, and the whole first minute and a half, my friend and I tried to figure out which of the two lovers was the crazy psycho. The reveal of the title came as as deadening shock, to say the least.
On the other hand, it's always exciting to have an early frontrunner for Worst of the Year.
I'll start this off by letting it be known upfront that I don't really know anything (per usual), I haven't read the book or seen the original movie. But I did read that the deal here was the book's actually way darker and weirder than the original movie ever went for, and that this movie's supposed to be aiming towards a closer adaptation. That said, it looks ridiculous. But Pettyfer, damn he is a pretty thing.
I watched A Little Romance featuring the perpetually gorgeous Diane Lane for the first time last night. I would rather they do a remake of that film rather than Endless Love. Endless Love is so cheesy down to every detail. So the remake is going to be cheesy x2?
But then again, seeing the quality of remake is never good nowadays, maybe it's good that they leave these classics alone.
About this Endless Love remake, OK Alex Pettyfer is so damn hot. How can I say no?
I keep watching the trailer to listen to the cover of Addicted To Love.
When I see a trailer like this before a film I have paid good money to see, it makes me feel doubt the main event and wonder what other bad choices I've made in my life.
I've never seen the original, but I assumed from the song that it was much cutesier and lighter.
I will say that I had nearly the *exact* same reaction to the trailer thinking 'good god what is this. is this a parody trailer in which cel phones are about to go off killing the mood? this is getting worse and .... endless love? I did not see that coming! and i've seen the original.
The packed theater I was in gave the trailer what it deserved... a few smatterings of snickers and a couple of "what the fuck was that shit?" mutterings. HELL TO THE NO.
Gabriella Wilde has an actual really long name because she's some kind of British aristocrat.
I hope Lee Crazy Daniels goes on with his project starring Pettyfer as a gay secret agent