A lot
has already been written about Uma Thurman’s latest film flop,
Motherhood, which earned just AUD $144 on its opening weekend in Britain. That's right: only 11 people bought tickets.
The film’s producer is blaming Metrodome, the company responsible for marketing the film in the UK, whose 'experimental' approach saw the film being released in
only one cinema in all of London, with the hope that word-of-mouth and exclusivity
would create a buzz around the film. Sounds like an amazing marketing strategy. Really.
The
Guardian asked veteran film critic Barry Norman for his insight. ‘Good God,' he said dramatically. ‘I have never heard of anything like this before.’ He continued:
'The reviews were very poor indeed but that alone isn't enough to explain this. It's a reasonable assumption that there was a marketing and advertising catastrophe, and people didn't know it was showing. But it should have attracted more than 11 people in passing trade alone. I'm baffled.'
I, too, am baffled, Barry.
But now that I've seen the website for the film, I can tell you the producers are not acknowledging several other reasons for this film's horrendous performance. These include:
1. The trailer.
Please note: the 'S
ex and the City-style
' calypso soundtrack and haunting lack of jokes.
2. The crayon-scribbled Manhattan skyline title cards. Again, see trailer.
3. The blurb, which begins with this line:
Eliza Welch (Thurman) is a former fiction writer-turned-mom-blogger with her own site, “The Bjorn Identity.”
4. The director’s statement:
Male directors often talk about making movies by deploying sports and war metaphors (“It was like going into battle!”), but for me the process is really more like cooking or sewing – carefully assembling particular ingredients or elements, and then combining them into what is ideally an appealing whole.
5. The
website itself.
It includes a parenting
blog. Written by Uma Thurman's
character, Eliza! I think it's meant to be the blog from the film—'The Bjorn Identity'. Quirky!
6. The creative manner in which female critics have slammed it as well.
'It's a yummy-mummy newspaper column splurged onto celluloid, like baby sick on your best cashmere sweater.'
—Ellen E Jones,
Total Films.
'This whiny drivel makes me ashamed to be a woman.'
—Wendy Ide,
Rotten Tomatoes.
7. The hilariously
amnesiac cinema workers.
The woman behind the popcorn counter in Piccadilly Circus (where the film was shown)
didn't remember the screening at all. "It's very strange," she admitted. "Even if I'm not paying attention to what's being screened here, I can usually tell you every film because customers talk to each other and the names just stick in your head. But I'm sure I've never heard that one being mentioned."
The man selling tickets also had no memory. "Have you got the right cinema?" he asked, looking puzzled. "There's another cinema down the road – perhaps it was on there instead?"
8. This is just a personal thing, but I have trouble looking at any bespectacled Manhattan mom in a comedy:
Without being reminded of this one:
9. Minnie Driver has a main role in it.
10. It's not
Kill Bill.
And if you watch the trailer yourself, I'm sure you'll be able to add ten more reasons of your own.
I know that if every film released was put under this sort of scrutiny, there'd be tons of others that would end up looking crapper than crap, too. But on the upside, maybe all this publicity about only 11 people going to see it will create the much-yearned-for 'buzz' the marketers were going for in the first place. Maybe it will be the surprise hit of the season after all! I'm definitely going to see it now, anyway.