princess

Belinda forced me to go see Princess Diaries 2 this weekend. I am certain that I was the oldest non-parent in the place.

I knew when I agreed to take Belinda to see it that I was in for 115 minutes of horrendous drivel, but sometimes, to please your partner, you just have to jump on the grenade.

I was shocked to find out that the movie was directed by Garry Marshall who has brought us fine entertainment (insert dripping sarcasm here) such as Overboard, Young Doctors in Love and Pretty Woman. What I didn't expect to see in this movie was blatant and shameless use of the product placement.

Oh don't worry, I haven't been living under a rock for the last 20 years. I know movies, even quality movies, have tons of very well placed product shots. It's just how movies are made in the 21st century. It helps defray some of the incredibly high production costs, etc. It's business and movie studios are in business to make money, not to make high art.

What I didn't expect was just how much blatant placement there was going to be in this movie. Here is a fine example. Notice the Vespa logo plastered against the wall? The other logo that is just underneath and to the right of the Vespa logo is a Piaggio logo, the parent company of Vespa.

In all of the city scenes, almost every wall of the set was covered with logos. The logos were placed slapdash on the walls too. Not over storefronts, but just in random locations on some wall somewhere as we the picture linked above.

Many of them were brands European brands like Piaggio and Orange that don't have a large presence in the US. Some of the brands are high end, like Mont Blanc, and the products they sell are probably out of reach of an average teenage girl's weekly allowance. Why put your logo in a movie like this? Because teenage girls everywhere will equate your brand and logo with the princess, royalty, wealth, prestige, etc. Maybe not now, but someday, these girls will be able to afford your stuff, and they won't remember why, but they know you sell the fancy shit they want.

The movie also had the usual product shots that have become so ubiquitous that we don't even see them anymore. Like the Princesses Apple ibook, Coca-cola, Nikon, even the University of California at Berkeley.

What's next? Why don't big corporations start buying the naming rights to movies like they do with sports venues? This way, next year we'll have great movies coming out like:

OnStar Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

McDonalds' Toy Story 3

Maybelline Pretty Woman 2

Smith and Wesson's Matrix 4

This way, we can get the product placement over with right on the movie poster and perhaps leave the content alone. Fuck, who am I kidding, they'll want both.

It's all about getting consumers hooked young. The cigarette companies weren't the only ones targeting kids, all corporations do it. Why? Because we let them. Because it's a free country. Because we were subjected to it when we were kids too and we are so used to being marketed to that we don't even notice anymore. Is the American public numb? Stupid? Clueless?

Besides being predictable, boring, poorly written and poorly executed what other sins has this movie committed? Well in what is almost the last scene of the film, there is a wedding and the clergyman pronounces the married couple Man and Wife.

The movie is also guilty of bringing women's liberation back 50 years.