The Critics Are Raving (Mad): ‘Megalopolis’ Scandal Reminds How Blurbs Are Used and Misused in Movie Advertising
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic This week, Lionsgate released — and then promptly recalled — an audacious trailer for “Megalopolis,” an ugly yet undeniably ambitious late-career monstrosity from Francis Ford Coppola. Normally, trailers come padded with hyperbolic quotes from less-than-credible critics — “quote whores,” we call them — plucked out of context and punched up with exclamation marks (a form of punctuation seldom if ever used by critics in print, but ubiquitous in movie advertising).