The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Synopsis: Morgan Spurlock, he of gonzo documentary Super Size Me fame, turns his eye towards another evil of modern Western culture: product placement.

In perhaps the ultimate case of having your cake and eating it too, Morgan Spurlock has decided to investigate product placement in film by making a documentary funded entirely by product placement. What results is a kind of moebius strip of a film, as he documents his efforts to get various brands to sign onto a documentary about the process of him getting them to sign onto that same documentary. It’s actually a very clever concept, and a smart way to step inside the advertising machine that, not satisfied with shilling you before and after the main feature, now has their claws in the film itself. The reach of these advertisers is actually quite shocking, as is their power to alter the content of films so that their products are shown in a favourable light.

Spurlock himself is subject to an insane number of restrictions as each product partner has their own stipulations on how they must be represented. As he goes through the contracts he starts to wonder what he’s really got himself into. But he pushes through and in doing so exposes exactly how much product marketing affects the films that we see in our cinemas.

And it’s not just about getting advertisers to sign onto the film. Spurlock also looks at how budget-strapped schools are turning to advertising to try and make up their budgets. But his main focus is on the ways in which advertisers are determined to get inside your head by means of popular culture. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold aka Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a consciousness-raising exercise that’s a great return to form after the disappointment of Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?

 

 

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