Now you may remember a while back I posted a Morgan Spurlock video – The greatest TED talk ever sold. Of course, being the naïve, young man that I am, I didn’t realise at the time that the TED talk was actually part of a bigger movie project that Morgan (yep, we’re on first name terms) was launching, and not just some big joke. Well, I finally got round to watching the movie, and thought it was actually pretty enjoyable…
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, as it’s titled, is very similar to Morgan’s TED talk, taking a close look at product placement (also called brand placement), while also covering sponsorship and advertising in general. It’s set out in a documentary format; the camera crew follows Morgan around everywhere he goes as he tries to haggle as many deals as he can with different corporations and investors in order to fund the movie. Morgan’s aim is to use so many different product placements and exposure deals with a whole variety of brands that the revenue generated from the advertising alone will pay for the film. However, (cue cheesy romantic comedy movie trailer voice) he’s about to find out that funding a movie about product placements with product placements…isn’t as easy as it sounds. No, Sir.
As some of you may have guessed, the entire movie is made up of Morgan’s desperate meetings with anxious, potential clients; there is no separate movie that he was ever planning to make. Did I just ruin it? Oh well. Anyway, there are definitely a few entertaining aspects to the film, if not interesting. For example, the film actually fits a few commercials into it, created especially for select brand names funding the film, and all starred in by Morgan. That doesn’t exactly sound like fun, but there’s no exploitative commercial connotation in the ads, you never feel like you’re being sold anything throughout the film. And how about Sao Paulo? Oh no they didn’t! Yes, actually they did. They got rid of all their billboards. That’s radical.
| Don't be fooled, it's actually an ad for white paint |
Overall, it’s a decent documentary. If you’re interested in how advertising works at all, you’ll probably like it. Although, I do think that Morgan’s a bit harsh when it comes to corporations’ attitudes towards advertising within his movie. I mean, I can easily sympathise with anyone who wouldn’t want to risk his or her brand being portrayed badly in public light, and to add to that, Morgan’s as sly as Dubai. I’m not saying Dubai’s sly, it just rhymed. Perhaps after all the rejections he started to take things personally, but either way, he did a good job and earns his right not to be ridiculed by me.
