Mean girls and movie ads



I saw the movie Mean Girls Sunday night. I'm a Tina Fey (only female head writer in the 25-year history of Saturday Night Live and the only reason to watch SNL) fan, and I've been looking forward to her screenwriting debut.




Adapting fiction to the screen is one thing, but adapting what is essentially a user's manual for parents, Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence must have been an extraordinary challenge. Fey does an admirable job, resulting in a comedy that's darker and more disturbing than I was prepared for.



It was also very funny. I had no idea high school girls were so pathological, predatory, and well, evil. As Fey's teacher character (Fey has a minor role in the film) said in one key scene, "It looks like a clear case of girl-on-girl crime".

I have two complaints. One, the movie's humor was almost deadly sharp, but language and content were clearly reigned in in order to avoid an R rating. I hope the DVD edition includes what must have been cut out. Most notably, you can have characters calling each other bitches and whores all day long, no problem, but apparently you can't have one character ask another "are you a virgin?" in a teen movie. Fey had to write around it, using the awkward phrase "has your muffin been buttered?" There was a lot of material that was altered or removed to meet approval, in ways that don't make logical sense.

And Two, we had to sit through 35 minutes of advertising before the movie began.

First, we sat through a form of advertising I'd never seen before, a video projection of static images, featuring local products and services, much like coupons you get in junk mail advertising. This was an oddly low-tech presentation. The slides looked old, dirt and scratches, as though it were archival material from a museum of broadcasting. Mingled in were movie trivia questions, to make it seem like acceptable, benign content, while waiting for the previews to begin. So, we endured it.

This went on for 20 minutes. The crowd got restless. The movie was starting later than advertised. And we were watching drive-in movie type ads while forced to wait. Then the real advertising began. When the main screen started up, we saw an actual TV commercial, a car ad. Then another TV commercial. Then another. I'm thinking, excuse me, but didn't I pay to get in here? If I have to sit through commercials, I expect I should also have my own couch and refrigerator, and watch the movie in my underwear if I want. I had to leave the house, get in a car, and pay money for this. What is going on?

Then the previews began. After being saturated with local ads, and television commercials, we were expected to endure another 10 minutes of annoying ads for upcoming feature movies. I was ready to start a riot. But there were only a few dozen people in the audience, it was a late showing. And the late showing was additionally late.

Fortunately, one of the audience members complained, and informed us that we would all recieve complementary movie passes as a courtesy from Lowe's Oaktree Cinema (which is named in the following lawsuit) which pacified us enough to stay for the main feature. Not as an apology for the unnecessary advertising, but because the movie started late.

I'm not the only one who's displeased. Not surprisingly, there's an effort to end this unwelcome practice. For more info on what appears to be a lawsuit aimed at preventing movie theaters from gouging customers with commercial advertising, visit

No Movie Ads




Posted: Tue - May 25, 2004 at 02:32 AM        

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