"The World's Greatest Hoax!"

Don’t believe everything you read:  Fake reviews used to sell major Hollywood picture.

By: Jay Buenaflor

January 29, 2014

Blurbs are short quotes for books and films (“One of the year’s best”) and an ad shrouded in mystery thought it could get away with fabricating fake commendations for “The Three Musketeers” starring Milla Jovovich and Orlando Bloom. 

The sham quotes by non-existent critics for the $75 Million Alexandre Dumas adaptation came out in the entertainment section of The Philippine Star in late 2011.  Together with three other dubious proclamations, “This year’s best action movie” was attributed to a fictitious “Ray Pierce” of Variety, the venerable Los Angeles-based entertainment-trade weekly.

Upon being informed of this, the magazine’s editor in chief, Tim Gray, issued a terse “our lawyers plan to deal with it” reply. 

An investigation into the glowing tributes, including one from Hollywood Reporter (“Awesome”), has concluded that neither of the write-ups nor pundits exist.  Two other publications mentioned – Empire Movies and Screen Movies.com – appear to be as genuine as the Hitler diaries.

Pioneer Films, the movie’s local distributor, has denied putting out the ad in question.  “That’s not ours.  It’s in black and white and very wordy,” said Ian Tan of the company’s creative department.  Various attempts to confirm with The Philippine Star who had put it out have faced a dead-end (“Our records don’t go that far back,” replied its advertising division).     

Welcome to the world of ‘contributors.’ “This is most probably put out by someone who is a contributor,” continued Mr. Tan.  “They’re people who put out ads and articles in newspapers and online and come to us expecting something in return.  We usually give them movie passes, but, never money.”

A free movie in exchange for a P65,000.00 promotion?  The transaction seems ludicrous.  “They usually get space in the papers for much less and, sometimes, for free,” countered Mr. Tan. “They usually do this to build their credentials and go around show what they’ve done and parlay it into paying PR (public relations) work.”

Take a quick view online and of any local newspaper and it’s increasingly difficult to figure out self-serving articles and those that are, uhm, objectively subjective.  Here’s a tip:  The former, called advertorials or native advertising, sometimes have no bylines. 

When asked why there seems to be an “epidemic” of dishonesty  - the Napoles story and a plagiarizing photographer, Senator and Supreme Court Justice come to mind – University of the Philippines political science professor Clarita Carlos said, “We have lowered the standards for rule of law so people are able to game the system and get away with it.  It is not surprising that you have incidents of “fakes” because it is simply a symptom of people / organizations gaming the system and enough public being indifferent altogether.” 

“We have forgotten what it means to be ‘excellent,'” continued Ms. Carlos . 

For the record, the genuine appraisals for “The Three Musketeers” were scathing, with The Hollywood Reporter calling it a swashbuckler wielding a “disappointingly blunt sword” and it tallying a measly 24% positive on the reviews aggregator Rottentomatoes.com. 

Disturbingly, a questionable December 18 ad for “In Fear” seems to say this nightmare isn’t over.  GQ seems to proclaim it as “More terrifying then Blaire Witch Project.”  The misspelling seems to suggest a real bad copy writer or a contributor has struck again.  I’m off to investigate.