Making Lemonade

New York Times critic A. O. Scott absolutely hated Smokin' Aces. Here's the beginning of his review:

"F.B.I.! F.B.I.!" Blam blam blam blam. "[Expletive]. [Expletive]." Blam blam blam. Spurt of blood. Plot twist. "F.B.I.! F.B.I.!" "[Expletive]." Blam blam blam blam blam. "[Expletive]." "F.B.I.!" "Hotel Security!" Blam. Exploding skull. Guy sits on a chain saw. Montage. [Expletive]. Plot twist. Roll credits.

Yes, I condensed a bit, and I’m sorry if I spoiled anything, but the above is a fair summary of Joe Carnahan’s "Smokin' Aces," a Viagra suppository for compulsive action fetishists and a movie that may not only be dumb in itself, but also the cause of dumbness in others.

Although the approval of The New York Times is pretty much irrelevant to the business a movie like this can do, you'd still think that the studio would stay as far away from a quote like that as they could.

Not these guys. They've taken Scott's lead paragraph, reworked it a bit, and made it their new commercial. They intersperse the words, in both graphics and voice-over, with clips from the movie, and would you believe, they actually make it appealing. It comes off as a straight-to-the-point action movie, and who doesn't like a bit of that from time to time.

Unfortunately for the marketing department, I'd already read enough middling-to-bad reviews that I'm not interested in actually going to see it, but if I hadn't, this ad would've been a good nudge in the other direction.