First of all, let me be clear about one thing. Crazy, Stupid Love is entertaining and funny. The acting is uniformly quite good, as is the direction and, with the exception of the awkwardly shoehorned product placements, the writing ain't half bad. But, really, this product placement thing is like a disease. And it's destroying entertainment as we know it. Here is an incomplete list drawn only from memory, of just some of the products incorporated awkwardly into the storyline. An asterisk (*) beside the product name indicates that it actually made it into the mouth of an actor in the form of dialogue.
*Pringles
*Grey Goose
Lowe's
*Macy's
*McDonald's
AMC Movie Theatres
*The Gap
*TMZ
*Stanford University
*Sorrento's Pizza
*New Balance
*Dirty Dancing (the film)
Once upon a time, movie studios actually financed films. With their own money! Can you imagine?
Now, I know the industry is being squeezed. Fewer folks are going out to the movies. DVD is dead, etc. etc. But the fundamental business model used to be that a studio took a risk on a picture. They put their money where their mouth was. Nowadays, not so much. Financing comes from all sorts of revenue streams with all sorts of idiotic strings attached and no one seems to have the requisite ego or balls to stand up and say "No" to this madness.
I don't care what anybody says. There is no question that the writing suffers when lines of dialogue have to twist and turn to pay homage to product names. One guaranteed result of all of this? The films themselves instantly have a shorter shelf life. Just imagine if a Hollywood classic like All About Eve had been riddled with products of the day. It would be instantly dated and awkward, requiring liner notes for 21st century audiences unfamiliar with Moxie, Brylcreem and Bromo.
[ed note: for an older rant on this subject see: Sex And The... Shopping?]
