Worst Trailers: "Alpha and Omega"

Ok lets face it, there a lot of crap coming out right now. Like, pretty much everything. I've seen three good movies this year. And it's August. Thank God for Edgar Wright or I would have had a very crappy birthday movie month. We blamed the crap assaulting us on the writers strike for a while, but can we really use that excuse anymore or have they just completely stopped trying? The evidence points to B. So what can we do? Not go to the movies anymore? Well I work there so please don't do that. If Harkins goes under, I'll be the first to get cut. I'm just Poster Guy™ (official job title and registered super-hero name.) Yes if I lost my job, the desperation would probably bring out the best writing of my career, but without constant movie knowledge streaming through my head I'd probably just write about death and depression and black birds and stuff. Not the kind of blog you all signed up for I know. So since avoiding the theater like the plague as you perhaps should is out of the question, what can you do? Cope. I bet you thought I was going to write something super eloquent and inspiring there huh? Fooled ya! Hahaha! Guess you don't know all of my tricks do you? But seriously all we can do at this point is cope and wait for the one good movie a month that comes out. (And thats one good movie a month in summer, just wait until, say, September - November *shudder*.) How do we cope, you ask? Assassinate the cast of Grown Ups! Read this blog! Glean wisdom and discernment. That way when you inevitably find yourself seated in a movie that's going drain your intelligence at a stupefying pace, you can make it out alive. The trailer currently draining my intelligence at a stupefying pace whenever if plays is another awful animated kids movie: Alpha and Omega.




Now I'm not going to go on another rant about how the people who make these movies are killing our countries prospects at any kind of intellectual future. And I'm not going to make another awesome graph proving this theory. I'm just going to point out the ironic fact that if we keep subjecting our kids to kids movies that aren't WALL*E, they will end up looking and acting a lot like the humans in WALL*E. Just saying. Lets take a detailed look at this trailer.


First of all I have to mention that this is one of the worst edited trailers I've ever seen. Dialogue and video is dropped in out of context at random places sometimes to try and make sense of the mess, but mostly as a cheap attempt at humor. I'll point this out to you as I notices it.  


And right out of the gate we have Annoying Trailer Narrator Guy (ATNG, Official Title). Since this movie has no plot, he has to pretend it does and inform us with just what we need to get through the trailer with some semblance of understanding. I will attempt to make the obvious even more obvious sans the winky wolf allusions, and replacing them with something we can all understand; High School social statuses. Kate is the straight A's head cheer leader. Humphrey is the socially awkward chess nerd presumably with some inner beauty or some shit like that. Notice how the ATNG says, "Humphrey is at the bottom of the heap," and then all the other wolves heap on top of him. Hahahahaha! It's already clever! "Get your butt out of my face!" Humphrey cries. Then he spits. Can wolves spit? I'm going to hope that you can figure that one out for yourself. If you can, you're already smarter than the hundreds of people that worked on this movie. Cue the obtrusive guitar music as Kate giggles at the whole butt-spitting interchange. This annoys me because it sets up the kind of 'humor' that is going to run through this whole trailer and, presumably, movie. P.S. Don't forget the butt thing! It comes back later!


If my likening this movie to a cliche High School comedy needed any substantiation, we just got it as the gaggle of awkward teen boy-wolves ogle Kate as she flips her hair in slow motion. Could this movie get any more contrived? Let me reaffirm that this is their sense of humor. Heaven help us. Then, the law gets laid down. "Humphrey you know the rules. She's an Alpha. You're an Omega." Oh no! Forbidden love! We haven't seen this plot point in absolutely everything for the last 500 years! I wonder how it will come out in the end! Could she possibly get over her superior breeding and stoop to this homely goof's level and find true love?! Of course! Because the stupid unattractive person always get the hot popular one in the movies! It keeps us in real life dreaming and chasing after people who are too good for us and then morosely wondering why we stay single. Ah, America.


"We can eat together, but we can't... you know... howl together." Sex joke. In a kids movie. About wolves. Awesome. Is that supposed to appeal the parents in the audience? As the proud brother of an 11 year old and the proud parent of several deceased cats and one deceased bamboo plant named Franklin, I can tell you that I don't find that enticing at all.


Then ATNG teamed with some really bad wolf voice acting we get a pseudo witty super plot download. Kate and Humphrey are far from home! Idaho! To Repopulate! (Sex joke # 2 ensues). This movie gets originality points for one thing; it's not often you see a plot where people or animals want to escape back to Canada. Kudos.


They jump in a rusty bed of a truck and we get a classic interchange where Humphrey "has to go." "Can't you hold it?" "No! I can't!" he says with all the over dramatics and bad acting of a jr. high school girl. Then they run into a bunch of bears and Humphrey shakingly declares that he "just went." Notice it never shows his mouth as he's saying this. Because this bit of dialogue was added in from another part of the movie as an attempt to make a joke. These are the kinds of comic geniuses we're dealing with here!


I'm not going to even address the awfulness of that whole "grab my tail scene" except for the AWFUL voice acting on Justin Long's part. A bunch of more nonsensical stuff follows involving trains, flirtation dialogue and giggling wolves. I swear if that wolf giggles one more time I'm going to throw a snowball at it... Oh... Humphrey just did that. Wait... how did he pick up the snow or form the ball without fingers and opposable thumbs? I guess we shouldn't focus on every flaw in there or this post will turn into War and Peace (originally titled War! What is it Good For? btw). I'll just hit a couple more points.

• The awful stoner wolf calling Humphrey 'that sly dog.' Get it? Because wolves are related to dogs!
• 'New breed of adventure!' Get it? Because they're wolves not... whatever they think the normal breed of adventure refers to.
• "Do you trust me?" Yes that is a very overused cliche. Yes it was awesomely romantic in Titanic, Aladdin, and Epic Fletcher. No it's not awesome here. It's awful. And seriously what's up with the horrible voice acting?!
• The wolf grabbing onto the goose's feet and using its apparently sufficient strength to water-ski. What's he grabbing on with? His paws? I don't know either. And doesn't it take something as powerful as a boat to get enough speed and momentum to keep one suspended above water? Then then of course the goose flies the wolf into a moose's butt. Cue the obviously out of place "Oh! Again with the butts!" and the even more out of place shot of Kate looking awkward. It says a lot about your comedy prowess if you make it look that hard to just crack one joke about asses.
• The shamelessly blatant advertisement for 3D at the end of the trailer with a goose hitting a golf ball at the audience. "Watch this." It's like they're not even trying to be clever. Or maybe that is them trying. *Shudder*.

I do like one tiny little thing about the trailer and that's the foreign goose's voice at the end. No, I don't like anything he says or does, but his accent is cool. I want that goose's accent to read books to me and stuff. But besides one case of not-horrible voice casting this movie has nothing going for it. At all.

If there ever was a movie to skip bringing the fam to, this is it.

Soupy Twist.