This Week In Posters, 12-26-23. Spaceman Sandler!

The last This Week In Posters of 2023, featuring Sad Spaceman Adam Sandler and the return of Muncher.

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Well, folks, it’s finally here. The last This Week In Movie Posters of 2023. I’m not much for Year in Review posts, but it has been a hell of a year. I can’t say enough how much your readership means to me. It’s a huge bummer spending 16 or 17 years trying to build a stable home for your work only to have to start all over again. I take solace in the fact that it’s not just me, it’s basically the entire ad-supported internet. But I can say genuinely that it’s been gratifying trying to help build a new internet that’s actually for reading. I can read your comments, and share my work without having to be embarrassed about the godawful user experience… It’s… nice. So, thank you. It means a lot.

Now then, on to this week’s posters.

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.

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We begin this week with the poster for Anything But You. I have to say, in my head, “Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney soaking wet” sounds a lot hotter than this. It’s like they asked an AI to take all the sex out of it. And take the names out of order just because.

Tagline: “This isn’t what it looks like.”

I mean, it looks like two hot blond people sitting on a giant buoy in the Sydney harbor. Should I be getting something different than that? Because that’s an oddly specific thing to make me think if you’re just going to yank the rug out from under me.

Here’s one of a big batch of character posters for the new Mean Girls movie, which some commenters informed me is actually a film adaptation of the musical stage play, which was an adaptation of the original film. What was that Mitch Hedberg joke about remixing a remix?

Anyway, there are a bunch of these posters, with new faces on characters you already know. I’m not sure what to think about this one. The trailer looks surprisingly funny (and I’ll take more Tim Meadows however I can get him), but taking a comedy I love and putting music into it sounds more annoying than intriguing. “Remember Nirvana? Now they’re a t-shirt you can buy at Target!”

I guess I’ll be pretending to love this to seem less old. But I’ll have to work myself up to it. You have to warm up before doing anything strenuous at my age. Set yourself up with a consistent flexibility regimen, kids!

Ha, I didn’t even realize that was Russell Crowe up there until I started reading the names and saw “Academy Award Winner” in tiny little letters.

That title though. “Land of Bad.” Seems like… they could’ve worked a little harder on that, no? “Land of Bad” sounds like a placeholder you crank out spitefully on a deadline (and believe me, I know a thing or two about cranking spitefully).

I like the guy with the big headset in the middle. “One gun goes dis way, udda gun goes dat way, an dis guy’s just like ‘ay, whaddya want from me?’”

“He gets bigger?” What is this, a poster for my wang? (I’m sorry).

Seriously though, an origin story for Garfield! And you thought Hollywood was out of ideas.

Meowy Christmas. Meowy Christmas from The Garfield Movie. The movie opens in May, by the way, I checked.

Is the concept here “what if Garfield wasn’t just droll, but also cute?”

Ideas don’t get better than this.

And it’s voiced by Chris Pratt! Incredible! He’s Mario, he’s an action hero, he’s maybe a religious guy now — it’s like Chris Pratt is merely a vessel onto which we project all our worst ideas.

I actually really like this poster for American Fiction. All of the characters look like interesting people I want to hang out with, which is a perfectly cromulent basis for fiction. But I have to ask: if the poster is pretty much just going to be faces and names, couldn’t you line up those faces with the corresponding names? I get that it’s a contractual thing and that Jeffrey Wright’s name has to go first, but… do we have to keep doing it that way? Come on. COME ON!

Is that supposed to be Sam Rockwell’s arm? That does not look like Sam Rockwell’s arm.

I have a newfound respect for the power of the flattop after this. It really is amazing that you can take one of the handsomest men in the world and just give him a flattop and it instantly turns him into a weirdo. And this was like a standard men’s haircut in the 1950s. Cursed era.

Ay, it’s-a me, Enzo-a Ferrari. I guana make-em uppa di carro so-a fast! When-a Enzo was-a just a leeto a-bambino, Enzo-a mama tella Enzo, “Enzo! You-a play-a with-a di carro again? Ain’t-a no-carro guana putta no-a food-a onna no-a table!”

Well a-look atta Enzo now-a. Eat em uppa you-a heart-a out, mama. Enza a-live inna the casa that-a di fast-a carro a-build.

This one just had the biggest Christmas Day box office since 2009. Neat! People really like singing, I guess. Are there other movies we could add some singing to? Mean Girls, maybe? Has anyone considered this?

Hey, she’s donating eggs! I get it. See, posters don’t always have to be complicated.

IMDB: An eternal bridesmaid freezes her eggs and discovers "the one" she's looking for may be herself.

Sure, why not.

Holy hell, Kristen Stewart has sideboob and ripped tris? We should probably check on our lesbian friends to make sure they’re okay.

Neither here nor there: that is a very weird-looking hand. That looks like a horror-movie hand.

Dang, he’s really eyeballing that kid’s neck. Maybe he’s trying to figure out if that helmet is going to fit? Only the one true king can fit this motorcycle helmet!

I love a tasteful food porn movie, and this looks great, but my first thought upon seeing this poster was… it’s cum! She’s pouring a big pot of cum on the food! Don’t let her ruin the food with all that cum!

I’m really sorry for this, guys. I keep trying to make this column less about toilet humor, but tell me that doesn’t look like a steaming wok full of cum.

Aw, she’s giving her little husband a bath. Seems like a nice movie about nice people. Wish my wife would bathe me like this once in a while. She used to bathe me all the time when we were but newlyweds.

Notice how you can’t tell whether he’s underwater or in outer space? That was kind of a problem with the entire movie. When you have a movie about a superhero whose superpower mostly involves being underwater, I don’t know, probably more of the action should actually be set underwater. Or it should important whether the action takes place underwater or not.

This looks like they remade the Glen Powell/Sydney Sweeney movie for weird tween influencers.

I like that there’s a chicken in there so we know it’s Hawaii. Remember how there was the opera house in the Anyone But You poster so we knew it was in Sydney? Oh my God I’ve cracked the code!

I know I may be in the minority on this one, but give me absolutely all of the sad astronaut movies. First Man? Gravity? That other George Clooney one? Yes, all of them. I love the idea of an Adam Sandler sad astronaut movie. If there aren’t at least three guys in mission control played by guys Adam Sandler went to high school and college with I’m going to demand a refund.

Ugh. So I guess we’re doing “Ghostbusters as a traditional sci-fi franchise” now. Remember in the last one when they made a dead Venkmen played by a CGI Harold Ramis give the whole thing a thumb’s up from the afterlife at the end? You probably memory holed it, but that absolutely happened. There was also a new Slimer voiced by Josh Gad called “Muncher.” Muncher is back, baby! The fans demanded it! We love a hungry ghost, don’t we, folks?

Tagline: “The kind of ravishing, rousing, epic we don’t get much of anymore.”

Doesn’t “ravish” also mean rape? That word has a lot of range.

Ooh, a giant portal above Manhattan that they have to destroy? Bold idea! Has this ever been tried in a movie before?

Biff Wiff! Whatever else is going on here, it’s nice to see Detective Crashmore getting more work.

Netflix

I only want good things for Biff Wiff.