FILM

USA 2011 87 mins Dir: Morgan Spurlock

If there's one thing more depressing in modern documentary film-making than the celebrity 'personal journey', it's the film-maker who insists on telling us how the film was made - usually to underline their cleverness or bravery. With 'The Greatest Movie Ever Sold', Morgan ('Super Size Me') Spurlock does at least have the defence that the making of his film is the subject. He's also a fairly engaging guide, coming across like a lighter, fluffier Michael Moore. The trouble is that this approach smacks of timidity. Some of the really interesting stuff he uncovers about the product placement industry is relegated to the margins and never investigated properly.

Noting that 'Iron Man' had more than 14 'brand partners' plugged on screen and/or through tie-in products, Spurlock's big idea is to see if he can make a 'docbuster' about the product placement industry funded entirely by product placement - or 'brand integration' to use the industry's own weasel phrase. Needless to say, all the major corporations tell him to fuck off. So he winds up wooing smaller, pluckier firms attracted by his own 'brand personality' (that's 'playful' and 'mindful', according to a consultant), including a deodorant manufacturer, a small airline, a vegetarian food company, Mane 'n Tail horse shampoo ("also for humans!") and, of course, Pom Wonderful - who paid $1m for that above-the-title plug for their wholesome pomegranate fruit drink ("40% as effective as Viagra", apparently). In return, he uses his sponsors' products exclusively onscreen, blurring out images of any of their competitors, and is bound by a series of lawyer-imposed rules. Bizarrely, these include not disparaging the entire country of Germany.

Spurlock's enthusiastic, brazen sell-out is all good knockabout fun. The likes of Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky play along and add intellectual heft respectively. But when Hollywood's product placement king Norm Marshall reveals that he's had scripts changed on behalf of his clients, you want to know which ones and why. Similarly, directors such as Brett Ratner and JJ Abrams only get soundbites to talk about the suits who shove products into their films ("GE is my boss," says 'Hancock' director Peter Berg. "They don't give a fuck about art"). And the whole business of 'neuromarketing' used by the sinister-sounding Buyology Inc to make film trailers is surely worth a full investigation of its own rather than an aside. (Robin Askew)

website www.sonyclassics.com/pomwonderfulpresentsthegreatestmovieeversold/

Opens: October 14

Copyright Robin Askew 2011