Whether or not you were down for George Clooney's somber and nearly-silent turn as a hitman looking to retire in The American (out today from Universal Studios Home Entertainment), it's easy to understand why so many opening-weekend moviegoers felt like they'd been duped. Anton Corbijn's film is quiet and cold and precise and so subtle that it felt like an arthouse movie. But Focus Features sold The American like it was another action-packed George Clooney shoot-em-up. But selling the sizzle and not the tofu is something that Hollywood has done since the nickelodeon days. And they certainly did it this year. Ahead, the most mis-marketed films of 2010.
Catfish: This film got lots of buzz out of Sundance, most of it speculating on whether it was a documentary or just a reality-adjacent contrivance. But Universal decided to market it like the second coming of The Blair Witch Project. A Hitchcockian thriller? Uh, not even.
Morning Glory: This movie was surprisingly charming and witty -- and I say "surprisingly" because the trailer made it look like a sappy ordeal, loaded with contemporary click-flick clichés.
You Again: This movie had the opposite problem of Morning Glory -- the trailer and the Funny or Die clip of the female cast members bickering promised hilarity, which the movie sadly failed to deliver. In the slightest.
The Expendables and Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps: Both these trailers bait-and-switched audiences into false expectations. Expendables made it look like all these action icons were fighting together, even though some of them (Willis, Schwarzenegger, Rourke) were barely in the movie in the first place while others (Lundgren) were playing villains. Similarly, the ads for Wall Street 2 dwelled on Michael Douglas reprising his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko, even though Gekko winds up being a minor character who operates mainly as a plot device.
Tangled: This one was very much on purpose -- after disappointing returns for The Princess and the Frog, Disney decided that marketing to girls in any way was verboten. And thus, Rapunzel became Tangled, with trailers that accented the swashbuckling and derring-do and avoided the mushy love stuff.