Monday, May 21st, 2012
Movie reviewers are always looking for something to commment on .. and now that Product Placement is the hot item in the news … it’s a necessary reporting point. Reviewers tend to be forgiving of films that do well @ the box office and more upset with films that are disappointing (The Island only did $12 million at the box office) Chris Hewitt at the Pioneer Press: Bay also goes along with perhaps the crassest product placement in movie history ” a perfume commercial so blatant that it pulls you out of the movie ” and follows that up with a love scene that makes no sense and a character reversal so unmotivated that it may make you want to pull yourself out of the movie. Michael Feraro at Film Threat.com: Sadly, the product placement is so out of touch here. Outside of the movie (from a studio business angle), it’s understandable why it’s there. Inside the film, it’s so unnecessary. Vince Palomarez at CanMag.com: By getting his start in commercials and in order to recoup the budget one big nagging thing you will notice about The Island is how much product placement is squeezed into this film. Aquafina, Xbox, MSN, Budweiser, Reebok and Puma all make many appearances throughout the film, with every logo perfectly placed right in front of our eyes so we all know that they paid tons of money to advertise their product. It may not annoy many people, but to this dedicated movie viewer it not only was incredibly annoying, but seriously distracted me from following the story… what little of it there was. E Online: With too many people chasing them through too many unbelievable scenarios, the stars run through massive gaps in logic and, worse yet, some offensively obvious product-placement shots. See this and you’ll think someone has harvested your brain.
