The Greatest Movie Ever Sold?

My Leadership and the Law class recently watched The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. There are a few things that struck me about the film.

The first is the idea that this is a film and not a documentary. To think about this I had to ask the question of what makes a film a film and not a documentary. Google says that a "documentary aims to educate, inform and inspire the viewers whereas feature films aim to entertain the audience." In my opinion, this was meant to educate the audience so why call it a film? The only answer I can think of is that the idea of a film is more attention-grabbing than a documentary, and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock needed the film to get attention to fulfill many of the sponsorship agreements.

The next thing that I found so interesting was that brands would not want to be involved in this film. I can understand the reluctance to financially support the film, but there were many brands that didn't even let him get far enough to inform them of how much money he needed. I can only assume that they said no because they did not want to be involved with sharing how product placement works. I don't think that the public knowing about product placement is a bad thing. While most people probably do not know how much money is involved with product placement, we all know it's there. I don't think that anyone expects to watch a movie with unmarked cars, plain clothes, and unbranded beverages. I would argue that a product placement-free film could be less enjoyable since we get comfort and excitement from seeing brands we know and items we can purchase. I can't seem to understand why a company like Volkswagen would want nothing to do with this film. How could it possibly impact them negatively?

The last thing that I found incredibly odd was the section of the film that was not translated. The mayor and woman leading the charge to remove all outdoor advertisements in a town in Chile were interviewed, but there was nothing translating their conversation. I wonder what the point of including the interviews is if the primarily English-speaking audience couldn't understand what they were saying. Why wouldn't they put subtitles on the screen for this portion of the film? My guess is that in a film paid for by product placement about product placement, why would they want to share the reasoning a city would have for getting rid of product placement. Not translating this portion did add a bit more comedy to the film, but it could also be very frustrating for viewers.