I must admit that I’m a fan of movie trailers. After all, my undergraduate major was advertising—and movie trailers represent some of the best advertising in the market. The typical trailer gives the advertiser 2.5 minutes to introduce a film to a viewer, fall in love with its characters, be wowed by its action, bowled over by its humor, and be brought to tears by its emotion. The best trailers accomplish this feat well—often better than the movies themselves (see Jonathan Last’s May 25 WSJ piece).
This year, there are two films in particular that I’ve seen that fit this category. Most recently, Along Came Polly, whose trailer makes the movie look halfway funny. The sad part is that the trailer contains all the funny parts to the movie. There are no more—I promise you.
The winner this year for me though is Northfork, winner of The Golden Trailer Awards’ Golden Fleece Prize—the award for the trailer that most outdoes its movie. Northfork is so bad a film that I couldn’t bear to watch all of it. I ended up putting the DVD player on 24x speed over the last half hour. Even that took too long. The trailer, however makes it look like a halfway interesting movie.