Utterly Confusing Trailer for Joel Schumacher's TWELVE
We're all kind of like fortune tellers, using movie trailers like crystal-balls to predict whether a film is good or not. Sometimes our "mystical" readings are right on the money. Other times, the images the crystal-ball shows us are deceiving, making something look way better than it is. Those trailer editors are skilled craftsman, and they know how to cut together little bits of footage into something that looks epic and exciting as a trailer, but in long-form it ends up being flat and uninspired -- e.g. Clash of The Titans.
This is NOT the case with the trailer for Joel Schumacher's upcoming ensemble drama Twelve. That good? No, that BAD! Whoever cut the trailer for Twelve must have been at a loss, and just couldn't for the life of them figure out how to frost this mound of dirt, to make it look like a delicious cake.
Kiefer Sutherland narrates the film, but the bits used in the trailer sound like something from one of his car commercials and not something that tells a story. You can't even make out what he's saying half the time. Chace Crawford and 50 Cent play drug dealers, and Emma Roberts plays Crawford's girlfriend. That's about all you can gather from this trailer, other than Twelve is a drug so potent that Emily Meade is willing to do anything and anyone to get her hands on it... unlike those other drugs out there, oh wait, nevermind.
But the movie isn't all to blame, mostly to blame, like 99% of the way, but this trailer has some pretty abrupt things going on. The titles look like they were made over at the CW. MGMT's "Kids" comes blaring in for no good reason. And at the the 2:40 mark, the trailer looks to end, then they just tack on what looks to be a 20-second clip, like the studio the distributors were like, "S#*t! We forgot all about Emma Roberts, throw her back on screen!"
Twelve debuted at this year's Sundance Film Festival, to a disastrous response. Hopefully the film's distributor, Hannover House, won't put it up against a big film... ooops! It will be released on July 2nd against Twilight: Eclipse.
Synopsis from the Sundance Festival Guide:
Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Nick McDonell, written when he was only 17 years old, Twelve is a chilling chronicle of privileged urban adolescence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Set over spring break, the story follows White Mike, a kid with unlimited potential, who has dropped out of his senior year of high school and sells marijuana to his rich, spoiled peers. When his cousin is brutally murdered in an east Harlem project, and his best friend is arrested for the crime, White Mike is hurled on a collision course with his own destiny.
Led by director Joel Schumacher, a talented ensemble cast perfectly captures the obvious pain of children teetering on the brink of adulthood. Schumacher counters their overindulged behavior with operatic staging and a literary voice-over. For every decade, there are moments when youth culture is frozen in "art," to be reveled in by the generation that lived it and observed by those that didn't. That is Twelve.