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6 Great Movies With Dumb-Sounding Pitches

Zach Braff’s Kickstarter campaign has been scrutinized from nearly every angle by now, with people seeming to be evenly divided between those who think he’s a rich scumbag exploiting his fans into paying for a whimsical new project and those who think he’s found a game-changing way to help finance movies without having to cater to cumbersome studio demands with the added bonus of making a group of fans feel even more involved in a movie’s production. Of course, there’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around, following the generally positive response to a similar campaign by Rob Thomas and the Veronica Mars people. I don’t doubt that much of it is personal animus towards Braff himself, which would be totally fair if more people would just be up front about it.

6) Magic Mike

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I saw Magic Mike because I had faith in Steven Soderbergh, and he didn’t let me down. Sure I had to go home and eat my feelings after seeing it in a theater full of horny cougars who voiced their pleasure in a series of primeval hoots and hollers every time Channing Tatum showed us one of his nips, but I dug the story and everything. I think I’d probably like it more the second time, watching it at home by myself, after going to the gym or something, I don’t know. The point is, and most critics seem to agree, this was a terrific movie that was essentially sold on the premise of Channing Tatum taking off his clothes and showing off his dance moves that are better than any of us could ever dare to dream of matching.

I don’t know how Zach Braff’s movie will turn out. I can’t speak whether the odd and borderline ridiculous premise will play out when it actually gets made. The best gauge of the quality of the movie is in all likelihood the skill of the director and the team he assembles; a poor predictor on which to rely, though, is the stupid pitch that no movie can be completely reduced to. It’s unfair to movies.

It may be less fair than judging a movie based on its Blu-ray cover. I know it’s uncouth to suggest such a thing in the era of Twitter, or in the field of film criticism, where an immediate opinion is the highest form of currency, but maybe the smartest thing to do would be to let his fans pay for his movie and wait and see how it turns out. Then we can analyze the finished product to feel smug while Zach counts his millions of dollars and Twitter followers.