Misleading Movie Poster Quotes

On any given Friday, a fair number of movies opens across the UK. Some are brilliant, some average, many poor. How is it possible that every movie poster has critics quotes hailing the respective oeuvre as a masterpiece?

Of course no movie studio would admit that a piece of film-making they commissioned is outright rubbish, nevertheless it is astonishing how the distributors are usually able to put quotes on the poster about how great this particular piece is.

A lot has been made about the poster for Guy Ritchie's self-indulgent turkey 'Revolver' and the out-of-context quote "Brilliant - Guy Ritchie back to his best" quote allegedly from the Sun movie critic (which it wasn't).

Thankfully, movie history has cast a very dark shadow over the above product, but there are more examples of misleading movie quotes along the same lines which makes you think how a selected number of movie critics can get it so wrong (or whether the quotes might have been "taken out of context"). The following are examples of movies not worth watching, despite the plaudits:

• "An outrageously hilarious comedy" (The Heartbreak Kid)
• "A great time at the movies for everyone!" (Evan Almighty)
• "It…just may kill you with laughs." (Death at a Funeral)
• "The best movie adaptation of a video game so far." (DOA: Dead or Alive)
  

In general, it seems that one can almost tell by who is quoted whether the quote is reliable or not. For instance Maxim's former Peter Hammond seemed to have a reputation of producing favourable quotes for even the worst tosh.

Five star reviews by something like the Sun (despite being exculpated for Revolver) usually mean that you are up for a mind-numbing spectacle which does not have much of a storyline but is likely to sell out to large crowds.

Probably not unlike the very paper you would have read this review in.