Somewhere, in some cubicle, in Hollywood, or New York, or Cleveland, or Bombay, for all I know, there's some guy tasked with boiling down the plot lines of movies into fifteen word summaries. These little summaries end up as the TV listings on my cable guide.
They suck.
Just the first few words turn me off. They tell me "Forget it, Dave, you're going to hate it. This movie is crap. It's trite. It's tasteless. It's a waste of time."
Those words have exactly the opposite effect that the networks want to create -- they drive me away from watching the movies. Most of the time, I don't get through the description before I've moved on to the next listing, only to find myself again reading no further than the first few words and moving on, yet again.
Let me give you some examples. I won't tell you the names of the movies that the description is meant to illustrate. Just read, and decide if you would continue to read the rest of the synopsis, much less watch the flick. Perhaps you will agree with me. Perhaps not. After all, somebody bought tickets to these gems.
A simple Missouri farmer...
A liberal adaptation of the life of Jesus...
In medieval Korea...
In ancient Rome...
After causing St. Nick to have a fatal accident...
A career-minded architect...
Rebel forces gather...
A martial arts teacher...
A small town is brought together...
A single mom becomes pregnant...
When a man is mugged...
A tyrannical Roman leader...
A brilliant scientist is horribly disfigured...
A reporter awakens...
In the 1980's, a former rock star...
A family gets a police dog...
A soldier is released from prison...
After serving in WWII...
An enthusiastic computer programmer and his girlfriend...
Two brothers find a downed spacecraft...
An updated telling of the classic tale...
An IRS agent with a mysterious secret...
Two weed-smoking friends...
A former US soldier...
An aging transsexual...
NASA discovers an enormous asteroid
Two brash fighter pilots...
Two brothers with a history of conflict...
A martial arts expert enters a tournament...
A model and a car dealer team up...
Scientists train genetically altered sharks...
A reclusive and awkward man...
A famous rapper is denied membership...
An unemployed single mother resorts to...
A disgraced former FBI agent working as...
A cantankerous female FBI agent...
A struggling young artist receives inspiration...
After a detective's wife is murdered...
A girl returns from a mental hospital...
When a submarine goes missing...
A young pregnant woman discovers...
A depressed man is urged to enroll...
Psychotic killer returns...
A high school student dreams...
Un mercenario que transporta mercanicia ilegal
(just thought I'd throw that one in...)
Maybe some night I'll drink a lot of beer and combine all of these into the ultimate bad movie.
It will be about tyrannical, depressed, weed-smoking pregnant Roman soldiers who find a craft from outer space after being released from prison while psychotic aging transexual Korean rebel forces gather to train genetically engineered sharks that once worked for the FBI. All will die however when the asteroid hits in a liberal interpretation of the life of Jesus.
I'm summarizing here to save the guy in the cubicle some work.
It will probably make millions.
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