Great Film, Shame About The Poster

Posted on Wednesday February 10, 2010, 15:14 by Helen O'Hara in Empire States

I was lucky enough to see Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It recently, and I'm telling you right now that it both rocks and rolls. Starring Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, Juliette frickin' Lewis, Marcia Gay Harden and Barrymore herself, it's the story of a girl encouraged to be a beauty queen by her mother, who instead turns to the violent, slightly demented sport of roller derby.  It is, in other words, a sports movie for girls, and while it pretty much hits all the beats of that genre, it does so in a really smart and funny way. My feisty, feminist, Doc-Martens-with-roses-on wearing flatmate and myself came out of the film literally bouncing and grinning and wondering why on Earth this didn't do better at the US box office*. But not to worry: the distributors here in the UK have decided to go a different route with the poster - and the result is this:

That's a BIG contrast to the US poster.

So we've gone from tough, sporty, something that looks like it could almost be from Rollerball (the original. Let us never speak of the remake) to an outtake from The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants**. This is a film that should be a cult hit for years to come, the film that every single cool girl in your school is going to watch (along with Heathers and maybe Empire Records) and it's been saddled with this pink monstrosity. And why pink? Does anyone in the film wear pink or indulge in pink at any point? No; this is simply code for "chick flick: check your brain at the door".

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the marketeers here: the film did underperform in the US and does have its work cut out for it, because we as an audience aren't exactly conditioned to expect smart, funny, subversive films that are about women or girls. But really! Pink? With that quirky font and not a rollerskate in sight? For shame!

Ahem. So any other films that you felt were missold by their own posters? A Room for Romeo Brass springs to mind; what else sticks out for you?

*Presumably, guys thought it was a chick flick and women thought it was, I dunno, a teen sex comedy domination thing? Who knows what these people think?

** Which is, actually, better than its title. A bit better, anyway.