At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeff Wells has issued a plea for support of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The film is opening in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto and Austin this weekend, and Wells implies that a wider release relies on opening weekend numbers. “If you appreciate the importance of giving this awesome film a decent reception, you’ll clap your hands and arm-twist as many friends as you can between now and Friday into seeing it this weekend,” Wells writes.

Wells has never been shy about supporting his faves, but it still seems a little out of the ordinary to see any blogger trying to rally the troops around a star-anchored studio film. It’s not that I don’t relate: it felt distinctly strange to walk around Toronto and answer the question, “Seen anything good?” with a ringing endorsement of a $60 million picture starring the most famous father of four in America. I’m sure it was just an accident of scheduling, but Jesse James far surpassed any of the microbudget indie films that I saw at that festival (you can find my Toronto review of the film here).

So Jesse James has a lot of blog support. The weirder thing is, the case could be made that it actually needs it. As I see it, there are two major issues to content with. More after the jump.

As Wells points out, the film has an extremely high “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes (Wells cites 90%, but as of this writing, it’s actually at 92%). But the film’s detractors tend to be loud and vehement, and in the case of Kirk Honeycutt, they’re potentially powerful. Honeycutt’s negative review for the Hollywood Reporter has, due to various syndication deals, been reposted EVERYWHERE. Take for example the film’s external reviews listing on IMDb, where Honeycutt’s pan is excerpted in big print above every other link. The majority of the other 13 reviews listed on that page are overwhelmingly positive, but due to its at-a-glance prominence on the page, it’s Honeycutt’s review that comes off as the opinion of record.

But more significantly, this has to be the most passively promoted Brad Pitt vehicle in ten years or more. We’ve all heard the “Warner Brothers doesn’t know how to market it” angle; although I certainly sympathize with the challenge of selling a nearly 300-minute Western to YouTube junkies, you’d think the studio would at least take a chance on reaching older men and women by pairing a picture of Pitt with a pullquote from the rapturous Variety review. But have you seen any billboards or banner ads? I haven’t.

In an email yesterday afternoon, I asked Chris Thilk of Movie Marketing Madness to answer the question, “Am I crazy, or have Warner Brothers overestimated the marketing challenge here?” This was his response:

I think the movie is suffering from two basic problems. One: it’s coming out after 3:10 to Yuma, even though I think Jesse James was finished first. So it’s an also-ran, the second Western of the summer, never an enviable place to be in. Two: It stars a very un-Brad Pitt-ish Brad Pitt. I honestly think the WB team looked at the film, found that scene of him sitting sideways on the chair that’s everywhere online, and thought, “well shit.” He’s not cracking wise, he’s not bedding the beauty, he’s not being Brad.

I completely agree with you that this should not be this big a problem, but I just don’t think Warner feels it has any chance of non-niche success.

Fascinating: a tabloid star does a decent job of acting, and it apparently only works against him.

I’m not saying this is the scandal of the century or anything, but it is interesting. I have to admit, my concern is mostly selfish: I hope the film sticks around for a while, because I feel like I’m going to have the compulsion to see it three or four more times. But this is going to be an impossible thing to quantify: if the film does well this weekend, no one will know for sure if bloggers had anything to do with it, and if it does poorly, we’ll probably be blamed.