If you grew up in the early 2000s, you probably saw a trailer for Kangaroo Jack. The trailer gives the impression that the movie is a screwball road trip comedy about two friends and their wacky, talking Kangaroo sidekick. Except it’s not that. It’s an extremely unfunny movie about two idiots escaping the mob. There’s a random kangaroo in it for like 5 minutes and he only talks during a hallucination scene that lasts less than a minute. Turns out, the producers knew that they had a stinker on their hands so they cut the movie to be PG and focus the marketing on the one positive aspect that test audiences responded to, the talking kangaroo, tricking a bunch of families into buying tickets.

What other movies had similar, deceitfully malicious marketing campaigns?

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    Spirit looked like it would be gritty but was goofy. After release the trailer for DVD made it look sexy.

        • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          How you gonna “or whatever it’s called” and get the title perfectly right? Like call it “Stallion of the Cinnamon Rolls” or something at least.

          And it’s not a terrible movie. It’s certainly a kids movie but of all the trash out there for kids, it’s nowhere near the worst. Pull up Netflix and we can find at least twenty worse titles.

          • zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Lol I literally have never seen it. I do like that you can basically shuffle the words and they are all equally stupid sounding:

            • Cimmiron, Spirit of the Stallion
            • Stallion, Cimmiron on the Spirit
            • Spirit, Cimmiron of the Stallion
      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        No, it may have been called “The Spirit” I think. It was a black and white comic movie, but it had some color. Like the tie was red I think. Idk. Very long ago and forgettable.