Has Hollywood started branding the mediocre comedy?

Wow that sounds like an essay, don’t worry, its not.

I’m not sure how many teen comedies you have watched; you know the innuendo riddled, thin-plotted and badly acted slices of cinematography that often result in 1 and a half hours of cringing? The ones which must have either that one from American Pie, Aston Kutcher or some other 20-something masquerading as a 16 year old?

I personally stay well clear of these types of movie. Obviously there is a market for them, a huge one in-fact, and there’s always plenty of advertising around to remind us all of this fact.

What has stuck me though is how they are seemingly being branded and just how many films in this genre have taken on the brand. I’m not sure if this is a conscious decision by film companies or whether it has grown organically all by itself.

In 2007 I have seen a huge array of advertising for Hollywood made, mediocre comedies and they all seem to share one thing in common, BIG BLOCK CAPITAL RED TEXT.

Over a period of time, I had begun to equate this with my very own ‘rather poor films that i’d rather not see‘ genre. Its only then it dawned on my that maybe this was deliberate. I’m not the target audience for these features so that’s how I define them. Would a teenager who actually enjoys these no-brainers embrace the branding and spend their money at the box office? They’d certainly know what they’d be getting.

So where does this leave films that fall out of this genre in regards to branding? I think it needs some analysis and thought. I don’t claim to be a movie buff nor an expert on brands, all i’ll say is when i saw the poster for ‘3:10 to Yuma‘ (see the poster below) I dismissed it at first due to its similar styling to the afor mentioned genre. The fact that it looks to be a fantastic film, which has received great reviews and has one of my favourite actors in Christian Bale at the helm didn’t register at first. I’m also quite sure any ‘mediocre comedy’ fan that wandered into a screening of 3:10 expecting a ‘Sean William Scott fart joke‘ was probably disappointed too.

Below are some example:

The poster for 3:10 To Yuma