This Title Sucks

You'll have to forgive me

for thinking this might suck.

If you follow my twitter (that's @winefarts, if you don't) you might be aware that I was dragged to see "Bridesmaids" yesterday morning. I typically fast forward through commercials so I'd never even seen a preview for this movie, so the only reason I knew it existed was social media. The aggregate movie reviews sites I follow said it was good, and a couple of my girlfriend's coworkers said it was "The Hangover, now with chicks!" Other than that, I'd never heard of it. Considering how many millions of dollars film companies spend on these films, there might be incentive to actually worry about this problem.

First of all, the title totally sucks. What heterosexual man would ever voluntarily go to see a movie called "Bridesmaids" if he'd never heard of it? It sounds like the worst crap chick-flick ever if you know nothing else about the movie. Apparently the original title was "Maid of Dishonor," also bad, but much, much better. At least it sounds like a comedy with that title. Kristen Wiig plays a down on her luck mid-30s woman whose best friend is getting married, and the whole movie centers on how badly and forced the pre-marriage events such as showers and trips can go with the wrong group of people. Even if you don't like Kristen Wiig (I don't think she's great, but at least she's original) the cast is strong enough to get by. Melissa McCarthy is hilarious and I'm going to start watching Mike and Molly now (never thought I'd say that). The movie is really funny, but it's not The Hangover.

It's very difficult for Hollywood to rely on word of mouth to get their message across if every single person thinks every single movie that is pretty funny is The Hangover. When people say that, they sound like this season's American Idol judges. Not everyone is fantastic, and not everyone can win. The Hangover is the funniest movie of all time, or continuing the comparison, it's the Carrie Underwood of comedy movies. No movie is close, and every time I hear someone say that a movie is "The Hangover, with more boobs!" or whatever, I generally stop listening to that person. There is a reason that every commercial for every comedy film compares said film to The Hangover. It hasn't been topped. Even its sequel doesn't stand a chance to top it. It took six years for a film to come out that was funnier than Old School, and it will likely take at least that long to top The Hangover. So just stop it with the weak The Hangover comparisons already. Unless you're going to say things like "this movie is 60% as funny as The Hangover," in which case you won't sound like a giant dumbass.

Typically, my girlfriend and I mitigate not seeing previews on TV by getting to the theater early and watching them there. This approach would have worked for Bridesmaids if that preview had even happened in one film we've seen this year. The movie executives that choose which previews appear in what films managed to fool even themselves with that terrible title.

So how many other good movies did I not see/see years later simply because of terrible titles? Let's take a trip over to the IMDB top 250 and find out. The number is the ranking, based on user votes (for those unwilling or unable to click the link).

1. The Shawshank Redemption: This is the one that bothers me the most because it really might be the greatest movie (can 600,000 people that give a shit really be wrong?) ever and I didn't see it for 15 (!) years because of the stupid title. What is a Shawshank? How is it redeemed? These admittedly stupid questions with no answers haunted me for years until I finally watched the movie.

19. City of God: It's not really a bad title, I just wanted to point out that this movie is ranked 19, because no one I know has ever seen it, and it's a really great movie.

23. The Matrix: I could have written this entire blog post 12 years ago with most of the same criticisms concerning this movie. The difference is, this movie is extremely difficult to preview without spoiling anything. I thought this movie looked remarkably stupid in the ninth grade, as action movies tended to be back then. I had to be dragged to see it. The problem with the Matrix previews is that they all centered on the scene on the rooftop where the second Agent is shooting at Neo because it was the most glaring example of bullet-time. It was really about the 76th best scene in the movie and totally forgettable in context, so maybe in retrospect it shouldn't have been the focus of AN ENTIRE AD CAMPAIGN! It ended up not mattering at all, as everyone's seen The Matrix and they ended up making about 50 gazillion dollars from it, but it's still an example of crappy marketing that I can't ignore. And again, nothing wrong with the title.

26. The Silence of the Lambs: This is a great title only because the movie itself makes it a great title. In a vacuum, it's actually a very bad title inferior to all of the sequels' titles (Hannibal, Red Dragon, etc.).

52. The Pianist: This is the worst title in this history of film. The executives could have said "we have an awesome WWII Nazi-occupation movie" and named it ANYTHING INVOLVING THAT. Instead, they went with playing up Adrien Brody's character, a concert pianist, a job that might be one notch higher than "interior decorator" on the manly scale, during the time before Adrien Brody won an Oscar (for this role, no less) and he was just that ugly guy with the huge nose. Great movie though.

61. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I own this film, not because it's any good, but because when I was in college it was sacrilege to say anything negative about this movie, and uncool not to own it. It's actually a pretty boring movie, not unlike all of Jim Carrey's dramatic attempts. But look at how terrible that title is. "Mental White-Out" is a better title, and that's me trying to come up with the dumbest title I can that's still better than "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" without the aid of drugs in under one minute.

62. Requiem for a Dream: I was going through my friend's movie collection Freshman year of college, spotted this movie, and this conversation ensued (slightly paraphrased):

Me: "Requiem for a Dream? What's that?"

Him: "Oh trust me, you don't want to watch that."

Me: "Why not? You own it, it can't be that bad, right?"

Him: "Oh, it's not bad at all. You'll just be depressed for the rest of the weekend."

Me: "Now I have to see it. You've gotten me interested."

And that's how I saw it. The title is meaningless but interesting enough to get people to randomly watch the movie, which I guess makes the title good in a way. And like ETOTSM (like hell I'm typing that again), I only own it because it's cool to own it. I'll probably never watch it again.

73. Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Can you imagine hearing about this movie for the first time 25 years after it came out, with no knowledge of Monty Python, from a person that thought it was the greatest movie of all time (as many do)? That was my initial experience with this movie. And all I could think about was how stupid the title was and how accordingly stupid the movie was going to be. Ruined my whole experience.

75. Raging Bull: I don't care if that was Jake LaMotta's nickname and it was absolutely the best title for the film, there are in fact no actual bulls present in this movie. Can you imagine how disappointed this made a generation of nine year olds/rodeo fans?

130. Snatch. Need I say more?

208. In Bruges: I haven't seen this movie because I'm actually in the overwhelming minority of Americans that has actually visited Bruges, Belgium, and I can say firsthand I would never watch anything depicting people in that city. They are very nice people and I'm sure Bruges is a wonderful place to live if you're 70. It doesn't matter what this film is about, it's almost certainly going to be boring.

219. Big Fish: Unless the movie is a comedy about a fat guy named Fish, this title makes no sense. They could have named it "Ewan McGregor Tries Alabama Accent and Fails Miserably" and it would have been a better title.

OK, so there aren't all that many great movies with bad titles. In fact, a lot of titles of great movies are clever, like Good Will Hunting. That's all the more reason it drives me so crazy when movies have dumb titles. A while back there was a boring Adam Sandler movie with Drew Barrymore called "50 First Dates" that would have made about $50 million (reasonable estimate) more if they'd called it "Who the Hell Are You?". I'm not a marketing genius but I feel like that one hurt pretty bad.

I'm not done. "The Never-Ending Story" is a terrible title because it:

A. Lies to you

B. Makes you assume it's going to be boring

How about "Troll 2"? This film is widely considered to be the worst film ever made, and the title helps that determination out due to the film actually containing no trolls, anywhere. "Hell-Raiser" should have been a comedy about drunk truckers, not a horror film. And what the hell is "Bangkok Dangerous" supposed to be? An action movie? A porn? An action porn? Who the hell knows? Maybe this helps:

Or maybe not.

If any movie executives need help naming their properties (hint: you do), you know where to find me.