Art is an impossible concept to define. It speaks a language of its own, saying different things to different people. A piece can be declared a masterwork by some and trash by others. Such ambiguity isn't the case here, as these are objectively bad movie posters that somehow managed to fail in the ridiculously simple task of saying, "This film is of a certain type, and here are the actors in it."
Heavy Petting is not a movie about Malin Akerman getting felt up. Well, it sort of is, but it's mostly about a dog that stands in the way of true love. Someone took two things everyone loves, ruined them both, and called it a film. And it doesn't matter, because everyone reading this constitutes literally the first people to know this movie exists. Even the "Official Website" link on Wikipedia redirects to an Asian page about bank cards, because again, we are the first people to ever try to learn anything about this film, and that includes the people who made its posters. Here's one of those:
Anchor Bay Entertainment"Our in-flight movie is Heavy Petting, which means yes, you died hours ago and this is Flight 666 to Hell."
The poster doesn't advertise much. "This is a movie about a dog," it seems to say. And yet right away, the poster has failed, because based on that image, we are utterly unconvinced that the film features a real dog. It's such a bad composite that it's not clear whether it's supposed to look like the dog is pinching her nipple. "Probably?" you might think, since its paws are on her boob, directly under the words Heavy Petting. "I hope not," you might also think.
In later versions of the poster, they re-Photoshopped the dog to make it look 10 percent more present while it licks the beautiful, talented, creatively unfulfilled actress Malin Akerman.
Anchor Bay Entertainment"... and it's gonna get ruff." -- a cry for help from an almost certainly suicidal copywriter.
So now it looks like Akerman is being kissed at the same moment a dog corpse is being thrown at her -- which, to the artist's credit, would almost certainly disrupt the couple's attempts at romance. Maybe they finally got it right with the release of the director's cut?
Anchor Bay Entertainment"Watch out for this cock-blocker spaniel this holiday season!"
The marketing for The Snowman began with a rather mundane murder movie poster. You know, a bloody patch in the snow, some scrawled text about hunting a killer. It's so unremarkable that most people probably mistook it for a re-release of Fargo.
Universal PicturesMurder! Suspense! Fassbender trudging through the snow! What more do you want!?
Then the studio went and dropped this:
Universal Pictures"MISTER POLICE MY DADDY IS PRESIDENT OF MURDER AND HE TAUGHT ME HOW TO TRICK YOU. MY FAVORITE MEAT IS HOT DOG."
What was supposed to look like a taunting letter to the police ended up looking like a kid pulling a prank. No longer was this a movie about Michael Fassbender hunting down a serial killer in the frigid, bloodsoaked snow. Now the whole thing seemed to be some kind of Norwegian Home Alone parody. People were both confused and delighted, and that's how you birth a meme.
The internet loves to turn failure into conversational shorthand, and soon everyone was taunting MISTER POLICE with how they accidentally made a poop or forgot to wear pants. The film itself was a critical and commercial failure, but maybe not because everyone had spent weeks making fun of it. Though it must take some of the edge off the horror when you go into a movie half expecting the killer to be an actual magical snowman.
@pilotbacon/Twitter"This serial killer snowman is about to meet the dog sworn to stop him ... and things are gonna get ruff!"
The Accidental Husband sees Uma Thurman playing a radio host who advises a caller to break up with her fiance, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Uma herself is engaged to Colin Firth, and when Jeffrey finds that out ... well, it's a comedy, so you can guess where this goes. The first poster expresses the plot pretty well:
Yari Film Group"And when you find out this love expert is a dog!? ... it's gonna get ruff!"
It's so badly chopped together that it looks like someone taped in a stack of random faces and arms cut out of an Us Weekly. Firth is looking at the back of Uma's head, and that photo of Morgan was clearly taken as he watched a hitchhiker scream for help on a surveillance monitor. This is not a romantic movie poster. This is something you'd make if you never had time for your photo collage hobby because of your busy career as a murderer. Let's look at the next one:
Yari Film GroupNone of these arms or people were ever in the same room.
OK Colin, what are you seeing, mate? He looks like he's either trying to pretend that there isn't a piece of gum stuck to Uma's hair, or he's trying to remember if he left a baby in the backseat of his car.
This next one is just a woman falling to her certain death while two men sarcastically watch it? It seems like some kind of visual metaphor got stretched too far, and it cost Thurman's character her life.
Yari Film Group"When two men with no depth perception get a job as stuntmen, and one of them likes dogs, it’s gonna get ruf- kill me. I yearn for death, but lack the strength to greet him.”
Can you imagine trying to fit five entire people onto a single movie poster? You can? It happens all the time? Well, the person who Frankensteined the poster for The Whole Ten Yards made it look very, very hard.
Warner Bros. Pictures"When these ten yards meet 20 yards of dogs ... it's gonna get ruff! You know what? It doesn’t even hurt anymore. It feels like nothing."
Six-foot Matthew Perry has had his head clumsily removed and placed on a man with a torso only slightly larger than it. It looks like the only person here with all their original parts is Bruce Willis, whose skin has been so buried by the blur tool that he's more smear than man.
Warner Bros. PicturesHe's still sporting the smooth, bagless eyes of a 63-year-old man.
Maybe things will look better without the title in the middle?
Warner Bros. PicturesNOPE.
Somehow Perry's weird little head looks even more out of place. It's like they started by searching for a stock photo of "Bruce Willis vacuuming with a rooster," got very lucky, and then had to build the rest of the poster from scratch. Which explains why Kevin Pollak is playing some kind of fleshy alien penguin that walks on human hands.
Warner Bros. Pictures"BLGGH! BLAAGHGBLB!!! YOUR PLANET IS IN TERRIBLE DANGER!!! BLLORGGGHHBLG!!!!"
He'd probably be happy to know that some countries decided to edit him out of the DVD cover altogether. It still looks like a group of medical students cobbled a tableau with random cadavers, but at least there's no monster climbing on it anymore.
Warner Bros. Pictures"Jimmy 'Tulipan' je zpet ... and ya, it is going to get ruff!"
If the poster didn't list Cage's name at the top, you might be forgiven for thinking that they cast a lookalike, or maybe a melted prop from Face/Off.
Freestyle Releasing"When these survivors of the Biblical apocalypse meet this rowdy canine ..." *sound of gun cocking*
It's truly strange what they've done here. This is man who we've seen contort his face into all manner of absurd expressions, and they somehow found the one where it doesn't look like him. This is a man who replaced his head with a cartoon in the late '80s, and this poster made him look like a fan drawing by an artist who specializes in Sonic the Hedgehog fucking horses. Look at this facial range. How did they find a way to make this man look unusually ridiculous?
Columbia Pictures, Touchstone Pictures
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