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Typically when blockbuster movies come out there are tons of product placement and brand associations to hype up the movie. Typically, that’s not how it works for documentaries. Enter Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) to come up with the concept of filming a documentary about product placement financed completely by product placement. It’s brilliant. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is literally a movie about making itself…so meta. The keyword for this project is transparency allowing the audience to see exactly what goes on behind the camera in terms of the marketing side of business. Spurlock strikes documentary gold once again with this hilarious look in the mirror.


This was Morgan’s 5th film at South By Southwest and he didn’t fail to deliver. From the opening scene, you knew you were in for something special. Spurlock set out to make the Iron Man of documentaries and he definitively succeeded with a comedic approach to the messed up side world of movies. Early on, he admitted to selling out therefore…not selling out. Later on in the movie the term buying in pops up. Spurlock interviews great directors like J.J. Abrams, Brett Ratner and Quentin Tarantino to discuss artistic integrity and the general consensus was “whatever”. By making fun of the process itself, it really exposes how ridiculous it is.

The documentary does a great job explaining the actual process that filmmakers go through to get products placed in their films. You learn the lingo and go into the offices alongside Spurlock as he makes phone calls and undertakes meetings with CEOs and businessmen. The media meetings are hilarious because he’s filming them as he explains to them what he’s doing. “So you’re making a movie about this?” “Yeah, this is the movie right now!” The seemingly off the cuff expressions from business people when they finally get the concept is great. It’s really the people who make movies and the ones involved with this process are entertaining to watch.

This is a documentary so there is a message. Morgan Spurlock even travels down to Sao Paolo, Brazil to show a city who has forsaken outdoor advertising and passed a law to ban it. He meets with congressmen and shamelessly pushes the products supporting his film to them. He lets Ralph Nader know that he should be wearing Merrill shoes. It’s great watching Spurlock take a sip of POM Wonderful Pomegranate Juice while talking about how shameless advertising has gotten in media. When interviewing random joes, he does it at sponsor sites like Sheetz gas station or on a JetBlue plane. Within the movie are three ridiculously funny commercials from the top sponsors. I’ve never seen people clap so hard for commercials…especially within an actual movie!

The ending of the movie was pretty weird as if the time space continuum was broken. How do you show the promotion of a film that has yet to be released? Either way, I think it was a good choice to go full circle with the movie and show the process from beginning to end. I’m interested to see how the actual movie fares when it does hit theaters but I believe this is going to be another Super Size hit. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was hilarious, educational and transparent…delivering its message so that it would be heard. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Tags: Morgan Spurlock, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 9:27 am and is filed under Reviews, South By Southwest 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.