Morgan Spurlock’s “Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” is both a spoof of product placement in movies and the most egregious example yet committed to celluloid — if I weren’t already being paid to watch this movie, I’d feel entitled to compensation for having to sit through this many product plugs.
There’s more not-so-stealth advertising here than in “Josie and the Pussycats,” which, in my totally unscientific survey of many years’ duration, held the previous record. It was a pioneering effort by Universal Pictures, which has turned product placement into a dubious art form in both its movies and TV shows for NBC. Not that you’ll learn this from Spurlock’s movie.
Did you know that when the Coca-Cola Co. owned Columbia Pictures in the 1980s, there were prominent Coke plugs in virtually every movie released by Columbia and its sister label, Tri-Star? (Except in a drug thriller that featured an appearance by a Pepsi truck.)
Spurlock doesn’t know, or he just doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds him. (This film is being distributed by the specialty film arm of the Sony Corporation, which also now owns Columbia.)
He lined up 20 companies to provide the entire budget for “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” — the pomegranate juice company billed above the title kicked in a cool million — in exchange for product plugs.
Mostly, they’re small, green-friendly companies he’s shown pitching (with lots of logos). Spurlock rather disingenuously doesn’t mention that his best-known work, “Super Size Me,” targets the health risks of fast food sold by McDonald’s, which is why corporate America largely doesn’t return his phone calls.
Like “Super Size Me,” the new “documentary” is heavy on Spurlock-centric humor and very light on actual information.
There’s a segment depicting an MRI-like machine supposedly used to evaluate subjects’ reactions to proposed movie trailers. Frustratingly, Spurlock cuts to his next shtick before anyone can explain how this dubious tool can possibly be used in a cost-effective manner.
Similarly, the director doesn’t lob any tough questions when a director like Brett Ratner says he doesn’t see anything wrong with defraying the cost of his movies with product plugs — the most lucrative of which appear in lines of dialogue.
Spurlock is too busy selling out, or as he prefers to put it, “buying in.” He even persuades consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who deplores the practice of product placement on camera, to accept a pair of shoes from one of the movie’s sponsors.
But it’s OK because it’s all in fun, right? I’m inclined to agree with another interviewee, who says, “All the people who sponsor this film are idiots.” And I’m not so sure about anyone who pays $12 for the privilege of watching “Pom Wonderful: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.”