August
4, 2016
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold – US, 2010
It
has now been almost twenty-four hours since I watched Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, and in
that short time, the movie have provoked much thought, not all of which has
been positive. Some of my reflection has centered on the recent trend for some documentaries
to be essentially recorded essays. They come with an attention-getting
introduction that introduces an issue, state the director’s thesis, and then
offer plenty of facts and anecdotes to convince the audience that the director’s
opinion is correct. This is the genre that I would lump Michael Moore’s films
into, as well as other films like Hometown
and Taivalu: Taiwan vs. Tuvulu, both
of which were more about the directors than what the synopses of the films
suggested. This is also a genre that includes Morgan Spurlock’s films.
Now
there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this genre, provided that the director
is both knowledgeable and passionate about the topic at the center of the film.
It also helps if the film makes it clear that what is discovered or covered in
the film trumps the narrator, that he or she is simply a conduit through which the
audience learns something significant. Spurlock’s debut film Super Size Me accomplished this
admirably. That film had him investigating the effects of fast food on the human
body, and, in an act that method actors all over the world must have applauded,
he offered himself up as a human guinea pig. In The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Spurlock investigates product
placement in popular culture, and once again he casts himself as the subject of
his film. This time, though, his efforts are misguided and much less involving.
In
the film, Spurlock attempts to find financing for his next film. The pursuit
involves making an amazing amount of phone calls to potential investors and,
when one gives him the time of time, meeting with them to pitch the movie and
explain what sponsors would get in return for their money. We see a number of
these sales pitches and get a good sense of just what goes into them. After
securing funding, Spurlock turns his attention to exploring the legal
ramifications of having sponsors, and for a time the film becomes of who’s who
of lawyers, members of corporations, and consumer advocates. Some of this is
interesting, yet too much of it seems at cross purposes with its more involving
parts.
In
those parts, Spurlock takes the focus off of the film and puts it onto bigger,
more intriguing issues. In one scene, we watch as Spurlock has his brain
scanned to determine his “brand personality,” and it was truly shocking to see
the scan reveal things that could be sold to him. I also was intrigued by a
brief conversation about the thinning line between art and promotion, as well
as one concerning the sad pursuit of sponsors by educational institutions. There
is also an interesting bit in which a connection is made between visibility and
credibility, and it is truly worrying that these two things are sometimes seen
as synonymous. Personally, I could watch a separate documentary on each of
these issues. Here, though, they are included as afterthoughts, temporary
breaks from the main story, and few, if any, of them are explored in depth.
And
this is a problem, for, while this technique worked in Super Size Me, it is much less successful here. Here, we are asked to
invest in Spurlock’s attempts to make a movie and not sell out – or, as the
film puts it, to buy in. We watch as
he pitches ideas for commercials to his sponsors, creates promotional items for
the film, and makes appearances on television promoting the very movie that we
are watching. It is a technique that Salvador Dali might have found clever; I
simply found it uninspiring.
Spurlock
remains a talented and vibrant director, yet I have a feeling that the film
would have been more effective with a different focus. Perhaps it would have
been more interesting if Spurlock had followed an up-and-coming director to pitches
to sponsors or if he had stuck to investigating the growing use of advertising
as a stream of revenue in schools. What he has created here, while having some truly
fascinating parts, is too jumbled to be meaningful and too smarmy to be
involving. In fact, about forty-five minutes into the film, I began to wonder
just what the sponsors were getting for their money. To me, that says a lot.
(on DVD)
2
and a half stars
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