Woman sues over misleading 'Drive' trailer
Posted Monday, October 10, 2011 at 5:01 PM Central
Last updated Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 8:28 AM Central
by John Couture
As some of you may recall, I hail originally from the state of Michigan and usually I'm pretty proud of that fact. When my mom told me about this little tidbit from their local news, I felt a bit of shame over my birthplace.
It seems that a woman felt betrayed when she went to the local megaplex to see Drive because it wasn't simply a blatant rip-off of the Fast and the Furious. So, instead of being grateful at the chance to see an original movie and this being the land of the free and litigious, she filed a lawsuit against FilmDistrict and the local theater claiming that the two were complicit in a "bait and switch" campaign by advertising the movie as one thing through its trailer and delivering a movie that was something different.
Sarah Deming claims in her lawsuit that "Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film" and had "very little driving in the motion picture." While yes, the movie watching experience is subjective, it should be noted that Drive is currently "certified fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes at 93%, 182 positive reviews against 14 negative reviews.
While the lawsuit would be considered frivolous at best right there, Deming went on to claim that Drive "substantially contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith." So, by this standard would Sicilian-Americans be able to retroactively sue the makers of The Godfather for perpetrating Italian stereotypes?
If Deming's lawsuit wasn't silly enough, she's apparently planning on turning it into a class action lawsuit. So now, everyone who's ever been misled by a trailer will be able to pile on.
This irks me in much the same way that the existence of the MPAA irks me. It's no wonder that Hollywood has become stale as of late if its audience has reached the point where not only does it want the MPAA to tell them exactly what their children should and shouldn't see, but now they want trailers that divulge everything about the movie beforehand.
Otherwise, just sue when you didn't enjoy the movie. I wonder if I could then sue George Lucas for the prequel trilogies. I mean, the trailers led me to believe that I would be seeing a Star Wars movie, but the reality was anything but.
As I step off of my soapbox, I ask you reader to let us know what you think. If you haven't seen the trailer, I've embedded it below.