This week's most ridiculous trailer: Step up 3-D

How's this for a hoary old marketing ploy: It's the third in its series, so there's a "3" at the end of the name, but wait... now there's a dash... and a "D"... but what does it... O shit it's also in 3-D! It's almost like Hollywood is somehow contract-stipulated...

By Jef Otte

August 6, 2010

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How's this for a hoary old marketing ploy: It's the third in its series, so there's a "3" at the end of the name, but wait... now there's a dash... and a "D"... but what does it... O shit it's also in 3-D! It's almost like Hollywood is somehow contract-stipulated to make all third installments three-dimensional just so they can do that. But if there's anything good about that reliable chestnut of a tie-in, it's that it gets one thing out of the way right up front: This movie is about to be ridiculous as hell. And the trailer? Friends, we're happy to report it's equally absurd. Let's take a look.

So, how many times within three minutes can you employ the old record-needle-pulling-stop-the-music-then-there's-a-one-liner-and-it-starts-again trick? Some five or six, apparently. One gets the sense that pretty much every one-liner in the movie made it into the trailer, and the only reason they didn't use that trick a couple of more times was because there weren't anymore one-liners to put in there.

Additionally, what remains unclear is whether this is a trailer for a movie or five short music videos cleverly disguised as a trailer for a movie that never even really existed. It would make sense, since within the trailer there's no sign of any discernable plot, unless you count the multiple love stories possibly alluded to. Oh, and there's the part where the voiceover says, "If we're not focused, we could lose everything."

And in that case, we have some bad news: If this trailer is any indication, you're a long way from focused.

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