I’m feeling very mislead by movie trailers lately…

I generally trust my instincts on films, but I’ve been thrown by a loop of late. In celebration of my leaving, I’ve gone with coworkers for two “movie lunches” in the past week. One being The Namesake; the other was Reign Over Me.

Now, when I first found out Mira Nair was making The Namesake into a movie I thought, “Gee golly, what a horrible idea. I really like that book, but there is no way they can translate that into a good film. It’s a sprawling narrative about a family. There’s no real plot arc, etc.” But then my coworker Pam showed me the trailer online and it seemed so lovely that I decided maybe I was wrong. Well, I should have gone with my gut. The Namesake is horrible. Please don’t go see it. I’ve told this to two other friends and they refused to believe me. My goal is to prevent at least one more person from wasting their money on a sub-par film. Go buy the book. It’s good. The film is NOT. I went with two people who had NOT read the book and they also hated it, so it has nothing to do with having read the book or not. It just sucks.

Conversely, the trailer for Reign Over Me in no way got me excited to see the flick. In fact, I thought it seemed pretty awful, dull and cheesy. However, my dear friend Emily, whose movie opinions I very much trust told me that I should go see it…and I’m so glad I did. It was the best movie I’ve seen in a while. Very nicely done. I cried approximately 14 times, but it was not overly cheesy (except the VERY last couple minutes).

In summary, please go see Reign Over Me and NOT The Namesake.

That is all.