Product Details

• Actors: Morgan Spurlock, Ralph Nader
• Directors: Morgan Spurlock
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
• DVD Release Date: August 23, 2011
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B004UXUV98
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,059 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Since the advent of recording devices and on-demand services, consumers have been bypassing commercials like never before, so advertising agencies have stepped up their use of product placement. In The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) renders the process transparent as he documents his attempts to get Madison Avenue to fund his film. After a flood of rejections, he takes a series of meetings with companies willing to align their brand with his--and make no mistake, Spurlock is as much a brand as Donald Trump or Outkast's Big Boi, who show up to talk about product endorsement. The director's entertaining and enlightening journey even leads him to a juice purveyor that opens its wallet for placement above the title--hence the name of the pomegranate beverage which appears on all promotional materials. As one observer puts it, "You're selling out, but not selling out." For perspective, Spurlock solicits commentary from progressive thinkers, like Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky, and Hollywood types, like J.J. Abrams, who created Lost, and Quentin Tarantino, who admits that a certain all-night diner rejected his offer to appear in Reservoir Dogs. Spurlock even travels to São Paulo to take a look at their ban on outdoor ads: no billboards or messages on cabs and buses, rendering the city clean and downright dull for those accustomed to American-style marketing. The film as a whole resembles a full-length version of a Mad Men pitch meeting--but funnier. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description

First, he was bugged by the almighty burger, now Oscar®-nominated renegade filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) is biting the hand that feeds him by exposing Hollywood’s dirtiest little secret: the games they play to get advertisers’ products strategically placed in movies and on television. Spurlock uses his irreverent comedic style to infiltrate corporate boardrooms and ad agency pitch meetings to show how far they will go without our even knowing it!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A movie on movie advertising,marketing, and product placement made with money from advertising, marketing, and product placement, April 26, 2011

By 

Bobby Hami "Ultimateserge" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (DVD)

I sat through Morgan Spurlock's The Greatest Movie ever sold with fascination, but when it concluded, I wondered where was the film? Spurlock's idea is ingenious. One that very few people could have dared, and pulled of. He makes a film about the difficulty of finding sponsors to give funding for a project. The film however is the mission to meet with sponsors and advertisers; in other words, this seems like a behind the scenes sort of preproduction of funding your project. The money is going towards the film itself which IS the journey to get the funding. With commercials from official sponsors, one wonders if Spurlock himself is embracing the commercial enterprise. In other words, when does a spoof become to close to the subject it lampoons or critiques?

What I always enjoy about Spurlock, including here, is that even though he may disagree with advertising or the nutritional benefits of McDonalds, he appears for a large majority of his films as quite fair and balanced; unlike some people who from the get go detest their subject-*cough* Bill Maher. He actually gets in the game, calls countless companies and corporations for a deal, and gets rejected countless times for good reason. Not many companies would feel great about helping a film that is trying to demonstrate the intrusion of product placement in films. However, he eventually does get a good number of sponsors willing to spend from $25,000 to upwards of a million. Yet, the money is not delivered on the spot. There are countless contractual obligations that need to be followed so the rights of both sides are not compromised.

Morgan Spurlock is not Michael Moore. It's not that Moore is better or ruder than Spurlock, but that their styles differ. This shows for better and worse in this project. First of all, from Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, to the demanding people at POM, Spurlock is as respectful and cooperative as one can be. There is no sense of superiority on Spurlock's behalf. We get that this is a nice friendly guy. This helps to understand and enjoy Spurlock's point of view. However, what Spurlock is not is an adept interviewer. Noam Chomsky and Quentin Tarantino are fascinating subjects, for completely different reasons, but Spurlock asks them a question or two, and they are forgotten forever. He is inquisitive, but a Moore would push for more information, and really get down to the meat of the issue.

We all know that marketing, advertising, and product placement play a big role in the film business, but Spurlock shows it in its very extreme. He isn't revealing it, but he approaches the issue through film, knowing that advertising touches every section of art. Where it gets most unfortunate is when these corporate powers enters the school: an institution that should be devoid of corporation's reach. A big issue for Spurlock is whether this project will turn him in to a new man who embraces product placement in his work. For many, this may not be a problem, but for him it definitely seems to be.

Rather than being insightful, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is passionate and funny coming from a man who cares about these issues, and deep-down obviously abhors advertising's intrusion in every part of our daily lives. A downside to the film is the ending. Unlike Supersize Me where one could come back with a moral or conclusion, such as "don't eat frequently at McDonalds, till it goes bankrupt" the conclusion of this work suggests there is no way to win against advertising. The only rescue to confide in nature to escape the wicked nature of today's ever increasing commercial world. There is no solution, but only a few routes of escape from such despicable activities. Many things don't get better with time, and it seems that advertising will only debase art more and more as time moves on.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Concept... But No Money Shot, September 7, 2011

By 

TiTUS (Lakeland, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (DVD)

As the credits roll on this documentary I can't help but feel... unfulfilled. I expected so much more from the film, perhaps this is Spurlock's idea of artistic irony. With all the hype and all the potential I was waiting for the curtain to be yanked back on advertising, it shown bare for the offensive beast that it is. Like with previous documentaries of this genre, you indulge the setup but are really waiting for the one-two punch to come and deliver the knockout. However that's not the story that's being told. It starts as Morgan talks to these sponsors and pitches them his ideas, as one would imagine the smart ones back off because they're not looking to have their image roughed up, and pay for it in the process. Eventually some willing brands do join on but as you're anticipating the movie will progress into something more you slowly realize that's not what's going to happen. Once the backers for the film are secured, the branding process is explained and Morgan proceeds to become sold. Yes there are some points here or there where he talks about the damage advertising is doing, and how we could better get along without it, but that's maybe a total of fifteen minutes of the films entirety. Perhaps I'm naive to think that he could get all this corporate backing and still beat them to death with the truth, but that's what I've come to expect from a Spurlock production. For him to lull the marks into a false sense of security only to be secretly be fighting "the man" the whole time. I came away with no real revelations of how the advertising companies worked, no great lessons were learned. He kept eluding to all these "inner workings" that he was being privy to, but the audience doesn't truly see any of that. Instead he does just what every other movie would do, he took the sponsors money, he stroked their ego, and that was it! Again yes there were a few jabs here or there, but nothing awe inspiring. I just felt the documentary was billed as film that exposed the evils of advertising bought and sold by the advertisers themselves. That the genius of it was, he was showing the audience how they were being duped and the people doing the duping were financing the actual "dupe-age" of themselves! As I said in the beginning, maybe this is Morgan's idea of irony, that instead of sticking it to them, he totally played along, and the true evil exposed is the documentary itself. While that's very poetic, it's just not what I was expecting. Either way I still gave it three stars for bringing some kind of light to the idea that media and advertising are manipulating society. At the end of the day that still remains a noble cause in my book. Watch the movie yourself and take from it what you may.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Blind sheep following the herd, unless you're in São Paulo, Brazil, August 26, 2011

By 

The Book Runner (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (DVD)

Our family is fascinated with media manipulation and the recent popularity of dystopian novels. We feel the two have much in common and continually talk about what people will believe and what they are manipulated to believe by the "media gods". The dystopia's popularity emphasizes the realization that we are not the great society be should be and the desire for people to wake up to the ways they are being manipulated by others. Advertising is just one of the ways people are being manipulated today.

Morgan Spurlock wanted to make a movie about product placement in movies and the manipulation of companies to make consumers believe their product will affect their lives and to make movie directors believe that they have some control over the outcome of their movies message because of the money they invest in the movie to make it happen. In a very ironic twist, Morgan Spurlock wanted to use product placement in his own movie and fund his movie with these companies. Would he be able to do it and keep his own integrity or ideal of what he wanted the movie to say or would he be just another media prostitute, whose movie's message would be dictated by the product placement companies? What we found was that it was a combination of both. He was able to keep the final approval on his movie, but he had to compromise on the infomercials inside his movie to that of the sponsors, especially POM, who gave him a million dollars to fund his movie.

At one point, Morgan Spurlock had a MRI done as an example of nuero-marketing, which is the next big thing in advertising manipulation. That was interesting in a "Brave New World" sort of way. Another point showed a city in Brazil, São Paulo that had passed laws prohibiting outside advertising in order to see the beauty of their city. As one shop owner said, "We have to work to get the customer's approval. Most of our business comes from word of mouth". How innovative.

As a caution, our whole family did not watch this as some of the product companies' spokesmen were foul-mouthed and even the host himself is crude; another way in which life copies art. As in "Super Size Me", this movie was informative and yet, not without its obvious outcome.

Would I/Did I buy it? No
Would I watch it again? No
Would I recommend it to friends? Yes, but with cautions