' ' Cinema Romantico: Adventures in Movie Posters, part 265

Tuesday, March 01, 2022

Adventures in Movie Posters, part 265

I have written before about the poster of Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in “Pulp Fiction” I had tacked to my University of Iowa dorm room wall. Not all posters are made equally, however. And after recently discovering that Thurman, along with Elisabeth Shue, another middle-aged actress that Hollywood has conveniently, idiotically, infuriatingly forgotten, was starring in a new 2022 TV series, I took to IMDb where I was dismayed to scroll through Uma’s Twenty-Tens movie credits, including a 2018 movie called “The Con is On” encumbered by one of the worst movie posters I have ever seen. 


The photoshop is out of control here, obviously, that goes without saying, plunking the actors down in an airport terminal walkway with an airplane taking off in the upper right-hand corner and a briefcase with a few bills sticking it out in the lower right-hand corner that are like mid-90s high school computer lab graphic design. And that’s to say nothing of the dreadfully generic tag line – “And it won’t be their last” – that is tucked down there at the very bottom, like it’s embarrassed to have anyone read it. 

Uma doesn’t even look like Uma herself has been photoshopped in; Uma looks like a cardboard movie theater standee of Uma has been photoshopped in.

Tim Roth looks like he has misinterpreted a billed comedy as a middling thriller.

Sofia Vergara has classic I-Don’t-Know-What-I’m-Supposed-To-Be-Doing movie poster face.

Alice Eve is all of us, her posture rigid confusion, her expression offended skepticism.  

And then there’s the curious case of Maggie Q. Because while one is tempted to trot out the old “Shakespeare in Love” line “And a dog” about the canine in the lower left-hand corner by Uma’s foot, I wonder. Given how Maggie Q is billed on the poster but nowhere in it, are we meant to think the dog is voiced by Maggie Q?

What’s worse, “The Con is On” stars St. Parker Posey and she doesn’t even get her name on the poster! That’s like if Deep Blue Something had made “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” the hidden track on “Home”! I mean, what are we doing here, “The Con is On”? What in God’s name are we doing? 

Will someone just write a “Book Club”-ish movie for Uma and Elisabeth Shue and Lea Thompson and Mira Sorvino and make my dreams come true? 

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