The American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Timesthat the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking.
The smoking in movies issue has brought about much debate regarding censorship in the last few years, but I say bring on the smoking ban. And then Hollywood can get creative with hints at smoking the way it used to use innuendo and other fun tricks to imply sex. The irony would be that in the past, cigarettes were used as such implicit hints (see Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Chinatown and just about any Hays Code-era film). I also say that this AMA organization should be happy that Hollywood is at least promoting a healthier brand of cigs, such as the all-natural American Spirits. Last year’s underrated male fantasy rom-com Definitely, Maybewent so far as to devote an entire flirting scene to why people should smoke the longer-lasting American Spirits than other brands. Funny, I don’t recall any complaints from the AMA regarding that movie (though here’s an interesting complaint from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, at least).
Although this complaint wasn’t the biggest film blog topic of the day (that might be whining about Leo DiCaprio’s Neverending Storyremake), here are the few other responses I found around the net:
Here’s a tip for the marketing department handling New Line’s He’s Just Not That Into You: telling guys what isn’t in your movie is not going to get them to see it. Why? Because most guys who hate chick flicks aren’t going to recognize the 10 chick flick cliches you purport are absent from the movie. I’m not a guy’s guy, and I watch a ton of movies, yet even I am not familiar with many of the genre’s conventions. Also: having three of the male leads from HJNTIY mock and act out these cliche scenarios is just going to turn guys off more. The promise of a scene featuring a skinny dipping Scarlett Johansson (even if it is non-nude) would obviously be a much better sell to men than an all-male recreation of a “falling in love montage.”
Unfortunately, my advice comes too late, and HJNTIY already has a viral video in which Justin Long, Bradley Cooper and Kevin Connolly address male moviegoers in order to tell them that their new movie isn’t like most chick flicks and that guys “might even like it.” The six-minute clip reeks of desperation and misdirection, and if anything it should make guys even less interested. …Read more
There are a few things I haven’t been into for awhile: Ryan Reynolds, who keeps popping up on my television with that terrible-looking movie with Abigail Breslin (the title, which I keep forgetting, is Definitely, Maybe), and movies about obsessive compulsives. But I have been a fan of both in the past. Reynolds was really terrific (and yes, really hot) in The Amityville Horror, despite the remake’s uselessness, and he seemed to show a lot of promise. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen him deliver since (I hear he’s good in The Nines, but I haven’t seen it). OCD, meanwhile, was an interesting and funny character trait in movies until Nic Cage played the most unbelievable and annoying obsessive-compulsive ever in the otherwise decent caper Matchstick Men.
But here we have a trailer for Chaos Theory, a movie starring Reynolds as an obsessive type, and it really hooked me in. Certainly it had to be the music, beginning with that wonderful Carter Burwell (arranged) composition from Raising Arizona, “Way Out There”, and continuing with Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, which is featured in tons of trailers but which always manages to excite me. The fact that Emily Mortimer, looking as adorable as always, appears is just an added bonus. Then, there’s the matter of Reynolds and the OCD. The former appears to be in perfect shape (and I don’t mean his abs, which are not on display here) and the latter, discarded by Reynolds’ character in favor of anarchic behavior, is pleasantly dealt with.
Whenever Warner Bros. decides to finally bring this out (it was shot two years ago and still has no release date), I’ll be there.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Here’s a tip for the marketing department handling New Line’s He’s Just Not That Into You: telling guys what isn’t in your movie is not going to get them to see it. Why? Because most guys who hate chick flicks aren’t going to recognize the 10 chick flick cliches you purport are absent from the movie. I’m not a guy’s guy, and I watch a ton of movies, yet even I am not familiar with many of the genre’s conventions. Also: having three of the male leads from HJNTIY mock and act out these cliche scenarios is just going to turn guys off more. The promise of a scene featuring a skinny dipping Scarlett Johansson (even if it is non-nude) would obviously be a much better sell to men than an all-male recreation of a “falling in love montage.”
