Never read a DVD jacket blurb when you are choosing a film at the video rental store. Hyperbole features heavily, and if you do take the trouble to compare your selections you’ll be convinced that every film has won an award.
Everything is a ‘breathtaking and heartrending story that’ll change your life’ or if it’s an action film, the blurb’ll tell you that what you are about to watch is an ‘edge-of-the-seat rollercoaster’ that’ll give you a coronary. If it’s a comedy, however, it will be ‘laugh-out-loud funny’ or even ‘hilarious’. I want to see a DVD jacket that tells me there’s every chance the level of humour will force me to soil my underwear.
Let’s consider The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as an example. The DVD cover concludes: ‘… this is a time-traveller’s epic adventure into the joys of life, the sadness of death and a love that endures beyond time’, when it should read: ‘This is excrement, rent The Godfather instead.’