Videogum » Matthew Broderick

A Brief Note On The Ferris Bueller Super Bowl Commercial

Gabe — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:45:07 +0000

Last week a video appeared on-line in which Matthew Broderick played an adult Ferris Bueller, at which point Jalopnik broke the story that this was for a Super Bowl commercial for a Honda CR-V. And so Honda decided to just go ahead and leak the full commercial a week before the game. We are not posting it here. If you want to see it, you can see it. It’s all over the place. Can I just say real quick that this ad bums me out so much? The basic premise is that Matthew Broderick calls in sick from ACTING and then goes about having a fun day in his Honda CR-V, all the while talking directly to camera, and re-experiencing those klassic moments like the valet parking guy calling out “Broderick. Broderick.” (There are much more important reasons why this ad stinks and bugs me, but it doesn’t help that the monotone “Bueller” joke has been parodied and done to death so much that actually seeing it done in some kind of official spoof capacity is almost physically painful.) How fun. Let’s all run out and buy cars now. The thing about this ad is that not only is it just completely boring and lazy and unimaginative, which is particularly terrible in advertising because however insidious or malevolent the practice of trying to convince people to purchase things they don’t need in order to fulfill existential gaps in their self-worth, the fact of the matter is that it has least been INTERESTING to see them try and do this over the past 20 years as consumers have gotten more savvy and less easy to please/convince. But of course the ad is getting tons of attention* because people miss the past, and that is the saddest part of all. The past is gone, boys. You’re more than welcome to rewatch the actual movie on BLU RAY, that sounds like fun, but the uninspired use of nostalgia in order to sell a mid-priced sedan with decent mileage and family-friendly safety features makes me feel the way someone who tried to burn everything to the ground must have felt right before they did that.

Ferris Bueller’s Squeecond Day Off

Gabe — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:30:01 +0000

Some dude in Florida has written a screenplay for a Ferris Bueller squeakuel and is talking to everybody like it’s a done deal. He’s probably pretty important. OUR generation’s Frank Darabont.

The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: The Road To Wellville

Gabe — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:57:37 +0000

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that can’t always be true. Like, sure, sometimes people have good intentions but they lose sight of other very important moral considerations and then, whoops, you’re in hell! But other times it seems like the road to hell must be paved with awful intentions. Just really terrible, nightmarish intentions. It’s a very short road, in that case. Direct route. And then SOMETIMES it seems like the road to hell must be paved with absolutely no intentions at all. That’s the road that the crew of the Event Horizon took, for example. They didn’t know that the experimental Gravity Drive would take the ship to some kind of Hell Dimension and condemn them all to an eternity of suffering, but there they were, shrieking and pulling their skin off with their fingers.

I’m not sure which road The Road to Wellville took, or which road it is? Admittedly, I am starting to get tangled up in my metaphor. The point is: this movie sucks, like how hell probably sucks.

Once Upon A Time In The Today Show Is On CRACK Land

Lindsay Robertson — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:29:43 +0000

The Today Show does weird shit every year for Halloween, but this year was extra-embarrassing, with the cast dressed up as fairy tale characters acting out an awkward, muddled story narrated by Matthew Broderick as product placement for his upcoming animated film, The Tale Of Despereaux. It kind of has to be seen to be believed. The weirdness ramps up at 1:08, and don’t miss the banter after the “play” or whatever:

I like it when Kathie Lee gets mad that she had to play a “Grandma Wolf” (?) with a gigantic ass instead of a pretty “ethnic JLo Cinderella” like Ann Curry. Thank GOD nobody is even trying to be “sexy” this year.

Being White Is Hard!

Gabe — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:05:42 +0000

Diminished Capacity (working title Old Man Sunshine) trailer, you guys:

I was going to give this too brunches down, but what can I do? Louis C.K. is in it. You got me, ~~The Sideways Savages~~ Diminished Capacity. It’s a Videogum rule that we must support anything with which Louis C.K. involves himself, even if it’s a cookie cutter tale of bourgeois mid-life crisis centered around the screenwriter’s personal hobby that he read in Syd Field was a perfect centerpiece for his three-act structure of redemption. I’m sure “I’ve stopped throwing up when I drive” is going to be this year’s “I’m not drinking any fucking Merlot” at all of the Park Slope Mah-Jong games.

Matthew Broderick Is A Sad Sack Again In Finding Amanda

Lindsay Robertson — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:35:08 +0000

Despite the debut this week of an unfortunate and bewildering official poster, this new trailer for Finding Amanda, Rescue Me creator Peter Tolan’s directorial debut, looks charming and not at all like the movie being marketed. The movie stars Matthew Broderick doing his likable henpecked guy character, which is fine because he’s the best (the classic bathtub cleanup scene from Election comes to mind). He’s a producer with a gambling problem who goes to Vegas to rescue his 20-year-old niece (Brittany Snow) from prostitution in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his wife (Maura Tierney).

Steve Coogan also stars as Steve Coogan ad libbing, which will never get old.

Trailers: Helen Hunt Does “Bewildered Dismay” Really Well

Lindsay Robertson — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:20:25 +0000

You know how some actresses “act with their lips” (Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightly.) Watching this new trailer for Helen Hunt’s directorial debut Then She Found Me, about a woman who faces a Lifetime movie marathon’s worth of relationship issues all at once, I couldn’t help but notice Helen’s dedication to the Bewildered Look of Concerned Dismay. Seriously, it’s her Blue Steel: