This week's most ridiculous trailer: Life as we know it

It's always nice to see filmmakers getting ambitious. In simultaneous homage to and dissection of the conventions and mores that make a genre what it is, these bold artists challenge our assumptions as viewers -- and our expectations. Take Anton Corbijn's excellent The American, a thriller in which almost nothing...

By Jef Otte

October 8, 2010

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It's always nice to see filmmakers getting ambitious. In simultaneous homage to and dissection of the conventions and mores that make a genre what it is, these bold artists challenge our assumptions as viewers -- and our expectations. Take Anton Corbijn's excellent The American, a thriller in which almost nothing happens, which nevertheless succeeds by relentlessly ratcheting up the tension until it becomes unbearable. To make great art, we must push the boundaries of the art form itself.

On the other hand, fuck it. Why not just see how many poop jokes we can cram into thirty seconds?

Depending on where you separate one joke from the next, we're counting between five and ten during the latter half of this hackneyed turd -- how many poop jokes the film has to offer that didn't even make it into the trailer, it's impossible to know. The mind reels, really.

Of course, poop jokes are basically an inevitability given the setup of the first half.

Man, this guy and this girl pretty much hate each other. There's no way they'd ever end up together, right? Actually, Columbo, there is no way they could possibly, by some absurd happenstance or another, not end up together. Because we are in romantic comedy land, my friend, and that is a place where you can only find happiness with the person you most despise.

Why? Leave that to male lead Josh Duhamel, who lays it out at around the two-minute mark: "I finally figured out why Peter and Allison picked us, and it's not because we knew them best. It's because you and me together, Sophie, somehow, we're a family."

Or maybe -- just throwing this out there -- maybe they just knew all the zany, madcap hijinks that were destined to ensue. Or maybe they just dig poop jokes.

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