DVD cover clone wars

There is an absurb amount of ripping off goin on in the movie business, from ripping off plot and characters to poster and DVD cover art. There are way too many to cover, but we happened to notice one on our new release wall recently so I figured I'd post it.
(This is another link heavy post so, as always, try to click on on the links within the text, you lazy motherfuckers)

First, here's something Drew noticed about the box for the new "American Pie" movie "Band Camp".
We all thought "American Pie", the story of a group of high school kids trying to get laid, was funny and highly original, but then they somehow took a plot based on one joke and stretched that one joke over the length of 3 derivative movies and 1 bad movie somehow became a trilogy.

Now, the most over used joke in the whole series, "This one time at band camp...", which itself was exploited even further and used as a major(ly stupid) plot point in "American Pie 2", or "American Wedding" (who the fuck cares), has now been thinned out even more and made into the plot for an entire new waste of time, "American Pie presents Band Camp".

The only returning cast member is Eugene Levy, who made a name for himself as a great comedic actor/writer and had now decided to ruin his reputation by coming out with a string of horrible movies in which he plays the same obnoxious character each time ("The Man" being the worst of all so far). Notice him in these DVD covers...


Eugene Levy will do anything for money... except get his picture taken more than once. If you'll look closely at his hilarious signature "I'm annoying and constantly surprised by youngsters" face, you'll see that they are clearly the same face. It looks like they just took his head from "American Wedding" and pasted it to a new body on "Band Camp". I'd really like to know what excuse they found to add his character to this new "Band Camp" movie. He's probably a lawyer or an orthodontist or something lame in the other movies, so what the fuck is he doing working at a camp for horny band geeks? Give it a rest. American Pie is like those Hostess artificial snack pies - they seem like they'd be great, but after you're done they aren't nearly as tasty as you thought and they leave you feeling sick, empty and like you've de-evolved... just a little bit.

Next up:
There are so many copy-cat DVD covers it ain't even funny... except in the way that it is totally funny. We recently got "Skeleton Man", the cover of which is clearly a knock-off of a great suspense movie that no one saw starring our hero, the Bacon brother himself (his band should have been called "Bacon Bits"... oh well), "Stir Of Echoes"...


It also came out at the exact time as "Skeleton Key", which just goes to show you how stupid the movie industry and advertisers think the movie going public is.


They'll make a new movie at a certain time just to get some of the back splash success of a bigger hollywood movie. Elements of the title will be used, parts of the movie poster will be copied, etc etc... all in a poor effort to trick people into thinking "'well, if "Skeleton Key" looks good, "Skeleton Man" will be good too! And the box art looks so familiar... it reminds me of another great suspense movie I saw while ago... this one is probably just as good!'".

It happens to work pretty well, as we continue to get an alarming number of customers asking "is this movie any good?", and after telling the that it is guaranteed to be awful they say "well, I'll give it a try anyway!".

But here at Media Wave we know that any film with Casper Van Dien as the leading man doesn't need to rely on this cheap trickery, a movie with Casper Van Dien sells itself. Unfortunately for the selectively talented Eugene Levy, both careers have ultimately gone in the same direction and they both continue to make bad unoriginal rip-off movies even worse.

More rip-off DVD covers as they come our way... and they will.
-Jordan