No (***)

Did Ronald Reagan’s economic policies win him a landslide reelection in 1984, or was it his “Morning in America” ad campaign? Did Barack Obama win in 2008 because of his plans to reform health care or because of all those indelible “Hope” posters and message of “change”? Probably the answer to these questions is, some of each, but it’s accepted wisdom that even the best ideas need to be sold, even if the idea is overturning a dictator. This movie stars Gael Garcia Bernal as a hotshot young ad exec tapped to encourage his fellow Chileans to turn out Augusto Pinochet in a referendum held in October 1988. Pinochet had deposed the democratically elected Salvador Allende in a 1973 coup but retained support among much of the middle class.


By 1988, international pressure had led the government to follow through on plans for a plebiscite that would say “yes” or “no” to eight more years of Pinochet. Each side would, for one month, present a series of 15-minute ads on television. This movie follows Bernal’s character as he pushes for an upbeat campaign modeled after the ones he’d done for soft drinks and other products, one that focuses less on the atrocities committed by the dictatorship and more on the idea of a happy future for all.

While the pithy title might suggest a breezy comedy, and there are a few funny moments, the approach is somewhat like a docudrama. The virtual absence of a music score contributes to this. I liked the lack of glibness. The movie shows the debates over strategy in what seems to be a realistic way. Though the campaign is upbeat, discussions of the “disappeared” also make their way onto the air. The characters are on the flat side. The adman’s relationships with his son and ex(or estranged?)-wife are without emotional weight. (I thought the wife was his sister until halfway through the movie, and the boy barely has any lines.) Somewhat better is his relationship with his boss, who favors the Pinochet side. Another thing I liked was that the film does not entirely demonize Pinochet, showing the government’s repressive side while showing that many Chileans welcomed the stability Pinochet had brought. This is not the first place to look for an understanding of Chile or the legacy of Pinochet, but it’s decent on its own terms.

IMDb link

viewed 3/27/13 7:10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/27/13

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (***)

If you know someone’s trying to exploit you, are you still being exploited? That’s the question Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) asks of both himself and the audience in this, his third documentary feature. Spurlock’s thing is to make movies that are about both a serious topic and himself. Or, to explore what one marketing consultant describes as his “mindful” side and his “playful” side, both at once. This worked best in Super Size Me, which told us, or reminded us, how bad fast food was for you while depicting what would happen to someone—himself—who ate nothing else for a month. Applied to a weightier subject, like terrorism and world piece, the approach made for the amusing but shallow Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Here, Spurlock has found a subject—product placement—that’s explored in the very process of making the movie. Essentially, the movie is the director going around seeking sponsors for the movie, right up to the one million dollars for the above-the-title sponsor, whose name I haven’t included in my review, but the clever conceit of naming rights, as so many sports teams have discovered, is that it makes even the unpaid media, even the general public, participants in the marketing process. Very clever, just like the way Spurlock works in references to and examples of his sponsor’s products even as he interviews people like Ralph Nader delivering a counter message. We the audience are in on the joke, and it’s funny, but does this excuse the fact that Spurlock is nonetheless delivering a corporate message to a captive audience?

Besides Nader, Spurlock has a few other experts and celebrities, even Noam Chomsky, to offer their takes on the ethics of product placement. He indulges his playful side by making a running gag of a shampoo whose gimmick is that it’s intended to be used on both horses and humans. My preference would have been for a little more on the “mindful” side of the equation. Surely there must be some actual research into the efficacy of product placement versus other forms of advertising, or the effects of advertising on our product choices generally.

Spurlock does tell us that $412 billion gets spent in the United States on ads and marketing each year, and it’s fair to wonder what we as a society get for it, and how it changes our preferences. I think we’d be much better off without most advertising, and at least one metropolis has made a small experiment in that direction. Peripheral to the theme of product placement as it may be, perhaps the most fascinating part of the film for me was the side trip to São Paulo, a city of ten million where all outdoor ads have been banned. Does anyone really miss them?

IMDB link

viewed 4/20/11 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 4/20 and 4/21/11 and 4/24/11

Art & Copy (***)

It’s no coincidence that American advertisers started rewarding themselves in 1959, when the first Clios were presented. The year approximately represents the dawn of the new era of advertising this documentary chronicles. Two years earlier, Vance Packard had published his exposé The Hidden Persuaders, and one year earlier the United States Congress had banned subliminal advertising amid public hysteria. The next year Volkswagen and its agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, would introduce the successful and influential “Think Small” campaign.

Similarly highlighted in the TV show Mad Men, this was an era in which creative copywriters would become almost as celebrated as CEOs, and in which an ad could shape the product as well as the other way around. (An ad agency first suggested putting a logo on Braniff jet planes.) It was an era in which products, and not just fashions, became increasingly seen as lifestyle choices rather than practical ones, and campaigns focuses as much on creating an image as touting practical virtues of products. Thus, Apple’s famous “1984” ad, rather than touting the Macintosh computer’s ease of use, implied that buying one was tantamount to striking a blow against totalitarianism. Even Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign’s centerpiece was not lower taxes or a robust foreign policy but rather the vague but effective slogan “Morning in America,” though the other things got mentioned.

Whether this mode of advertising represented a true advance for consumers over traditional, dull snake-oil peddling is a question hinted at, but not really touched on, in this mostly celebratory film. Instead, director Doug Pray highlights and interviews the men and women who were the creative forces behind some of the landmark ad campaigns of the last 40-something years, including the self-aggrandizing George Lois, who coined the “I Want My MTV campaign,” Mary Wells, who put paint on jets, and Lee Clow, who helped birth the Apple ads and the Energizer bunny. While most advertising is dull and uninspiring, the work of these masters is, Pray tells us, worth celebrating. Whether or not this is true, this will be of worth to those interested in the creative process and its practitioners.

IMDB link

reviewed 11/10/09

The OH in Ohio (***)

? Parker Posey plays an uptight advertising executive who cannot achieve orgasm. Frustrated that he cannot satisfy her despite having a magnificent penis, her biology-teacher husband (Paul Rudd) finds an invitation by an attractive student (Mischa Barton) hard to resist. The movie marks the feature debut of director/cowriter Billy Kent.

+ I am a fool for the off-kilter appeal of Posey, though not all of her movies. She’s often funny, and eventually even touching, in a role that could easily be over-the top. Despite playing her sexual dysfunction for laughs, she and Kent make you empathize with her. Danny DeVito is also charming as the greater Cleveland area’s top pool salesman.

- The balance between humor and silliness isn’t always achieved. If there are people like the female sexuality coach played by Liza Minnelli, I didn’t think Posey’s character would have gone to her class.

= *** A fairly good humor quotient and a story that’s both smutty and sweet makes this a pleasing small comedy.

IMDb link