The Greatest Movie Ever Sold marks the return of one of the
premiere documentarians of the last decade: Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock was
responsible for the impossibly popular Super Size Me as well as a less adored
(both critically and commercially) Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? His
newest project is a film about making a film, especially about what it costs
and how marketing and corporate sponsorship pay the bills. Ultimately, it's a
film about Morgan Spurlock selling out.
I
thought, going into the film, that this was going to be a movie exposing the
ways consumers are marketed to on a daily basis, but that turned out to be
completely wrong. Here, Spurlock has set out to create a movie documenting the
process of attaining sponsorship.
Like his previous two films, Spurlock's
trademark wit is in tow. The
Greatest Movie Ever Sold is definitely the funniest film I've seen at Sundance
and it's actually one of the funniest movies I've seen in quite some time. His
laughable choice, to forgo artistic integrity for the sake of showing the
audience what it means to get totally wrapped up in the world of product
placement, is brilliant. The whole thing is a masterfully coordinated criticism
of the film marketing industry and to be in on the joke, to know that the
people he's talking to are being conned into making themselves look ridiculous,
feels like a privilege. When you hear Spurlock learn that his contract with
jetBlue, for example, requires him to conduct an interview on one of their
planes, you can't wait for Spurlock to sell out and oblige them.
Spurlock,
for better or worse, never gets too serious here and I wonder if he's ever
going to be able to do a documentary on a topic really worth exposing, but what
he does in this film is so ludicrously fun, so cleverly constructed that I'm
not sure I want him doing any serious stuff. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold feels
like Spurlock's invited you to be a part of a gargantuan inside joke and it's
never felt better to laugh at people in business suits.
