It’s been a good long while since I turned my sights on a Matthew McConaughey movie and that somehow seems wrong to me. The last one was when I covered Sahara, his would-be franchise starter where he played some sort of archaeologist alongside Penelope Cruz and Steve Zahn, who I’m beginning to think just owes, like, everyone in Hollywood a favor and repays them by appearing in movies. But McConaughey is such a font of comedic material and I feel like I need to get back in the MMM groove (the Cloverfield column required a recovery period afterwards) with a big, fat, juicy piece of likely crap that I can tear into easily.
Fools Gold reteams McConaughey with his How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days co-star Kate Hudson, who seems to be making conscious career decisions to make us all forget how wonderfully refreshing she was in Almost Famous. The two play a couple on the verge of divorce who come together one last time to try and find some sort of undersea treasure. He plays an aimless goofball and she plays someone who’s run out of patience for his antics. Wackiness, I’m sure, ensues as the two of them…lmklmmphgr…
Sorry, I had a little stroke there. Let’s just continue on with a look at the campaign.
The Poster
Let me start this section off the same way I did my Sahara column since it’s completely appropriate.
McConaughey is a bronzed god!
No really. I almost think this movie was pitched to the studio based solely on someone’s idea for a poster. “I don’t know what the story is, but imagine Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson tanned as all heck with her in a swimsuit on a poster!” I bet the deal was done right then and there. End of the meeting and let’s talk about a three picture deal.
Seriously (hey, I can try) this poster is good at selling the movie based on the personalities (and breasts) of the two actors involved. Get them smiling at each other, turn them a shade of yellow that’s only slightly removed from the residents of Springfield, hint at a tropical location by putting water in the background and you’re finished. A lot of people will look at it, be absorbed by the natural charm of the leads and turn to their significant other and say “That looks good…” So for as silly as it might seem, when you’ve got a movie that’s probably going to rely more than a little on the chemistry between the two actors and the audience’s existing affection for them this is the kind of poster that makes a lot of sense.
And yes, I’m now going to go and swallow my own tongue.
The Trailer
First the good news. The trailer does a very good job of introducing us to the characters and most of the situations in and setup for the movie. We know immediately what the relationship between everyone we see is and, for the most part, why we see them acting the way they do. It’s well-paced and I’m sure will instantly appeal to the same sort of audience that the poster is seeking to attract.
The bad news is that all of that is easy to do when you have a movie that seems to be inhabited by such cardboard cut-out characters and clichéd story elements.
I’d also like to once again point out that this trailer uses the same device of smacking the female lead in the face or having her fall down into something (it actually uses both) to convey just how funny that character is. I swear somewhere Susan B. Anthony is wondering whether it was all worth it if this is progress.
The one thing that the trailer really has going for it is that by putting Kate Hudson on a yacht like this movie apparently does brings back memories of watching her mother in Overboard 20 years ago as it was broadcast on an endless loop on basic cable. I swear I think I’ve seen it either in whole or in pieces more than I’ve seen Star Wars.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pduO42k62o[/youtube]
Online
The movie’s official website does not, for a change, rely on the visitor needing to “Enter the site.” Instead it’s all right there without the need to open a new Flash window or anything like that. I can’t tell you how refreshing that is.
The majority of the site navigation is via a compass that appears on the page, with points around it denoting the different sections of the site. That’s a nice contextual tool that, on top of the watery background, continues the same thematic elements of the poster.
“Story” is just a brief write-up of the movie’s plot and quick introduction to the characters therein. It’s not the worst one of these I’ve seen but still spends about 60 percent of its real estate on cast and crew credits as opposed to more about the story.
“Downloads” is pretty skimpy, much like the swimsuit sported by Hudson throughout the campaign. There are just three Wallpapers, a handful of Buddy Icons and the poster you can download. Similarly “Video” just contains the trailer and two TV spots.
You’ll find Cast and Crew listings as well as some so-so Production Notes under “About the Film.” Finally “Gallery” contains 19, if my count is correct, stills from the movie. Most of these surprisingly are not just pulled from the trailer.
Warner Bros. also created a Facebook application/game for the movie called “Steal My Booty,” a name that had me giggling for more than a little while. The app gave you a beginning amount of treasure and then connected you with others in your network who had also added it. You could then steal some of their treasure and they would try to steal yours. It was actually a little fun and probably the most engaging part of the campaign.
Advertising and Cross-Promotions
For a movie that seems wholly unremarkable like this the studio sure did enough advertising. It seems like I couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing a spot for it, and it was everywhere online, from IMDb (I know, not that unusual) to Hallmark.com, which makes complete contextual sense. By advertising there they could reach both women looking for something pretty and men looking for something that would buy their way off the basement couch and hey, if they can convince their wives to go see a chick flick then it’s all that much more likely.
If you go back to the official website for the movie there’s also a section devoted to cross-promotional “Partners” for the film. That includes burger joint Red Robin, who along with other partnersFunJet Vacations and Riu Hotels & Resorts asked people to submit their love stories to their “Fool For Love” contest that awarded a week’s vacation to the Bahamas.
Online jeweler Ice.com also got in on the action, creating a line of jewelry “inspired by” the movie. As previously noted, the limitations of jewelry, which doesn’t allow for the showing off of brands, led the company to go this route. Ice.com was also part ofCoinStar’s “Hidden Treasure” sweepstakes, giving a lucky entrant a $2,000 shopping spree at the jeweler’s site.
Overall
OK, here’s the thing: This is a very well put-together campaign. It hits most of the right notes and does what it can to appeal to its core target audience well either through the marketing material itself or through advertising buys and promotional deals.
But it’s actually a little too perfect. Like a formula that’s been refined to the point that it’s all science and no art. All the elements are too well timed and mapped out, without any soul or feeling left in it for people to connect with. It’s too corporate and impersonal. That’s why the Facebook game seems like such an aberration, because it’s the only thing in the campaign that people can interact with or which seems a bit messy, for lack of a better term.
As I alluded to before, this seems like a movie that was built around a marketing campaign and not the other way around. With the hooks of a goofy McConaughey and a scantily clad, tanned Hudson this is a personal care product masquerading as a movie, with an appropriate campaign to support it.
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