Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Fred Claus

Joe and I have a thing for bad movie taglines -- the descriptive phrase at the bottom of a movie poster. Classic ones include "Alien" ("In space, no one can hear you scream") and "Jaws II" ("Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water,").

We were tickled by the abysmal tagline for the Keanu Reeves football scrubs movie "The Replacements" -- "Pros on strike. Regular guys get to play." Joe insists this wasn't the tagline, just somebody's attempt to describe the film that somehow got put in as the tagline by mistake. It couldn't be more banal and straightforward.

Today I saw a doozy of a tagline for "Fred Claus." It was so bad -- and long -- that I burst out laughing and stopped so I could call Joe and read it to him. The next three people walking by stared at the poster, wondering what I found so funny. It shows Vince Vaughn on a Big Wheel, looking dorky with Paul Giamatti dressed as Santa in the background, rolling his eyes. The tagline?

"Christmas comes every year
But this holiday season
Santa's brother is coming along for the ride."

Could it be any more tiresome or dull? No. And I thought of a better one in two seconds:

"Santa's brother? Oh, brother!"

Maybe I should be in marketing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

how is "just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water"
a bad tag line? you can say that today, how many years later, and everyone knows what you are talking about. it was perfect.
do you have a better one?