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Amusing Interesting

Huge-ly Misleading

The new DVD cover for the British film Huge features a misleading quote.

The DVD cover for the British film Huge features a misleading quote.

Take a look at the cover below and you’ll see that someone from The Guardian found it ‘heartfelt’.

This would normally indicate a positive review, but if you actually hunt down the full review on The Guardian’s website, you’ll find Xan Brooks wasn’t too impressed.

Not only does he give it two stars, but the full sentence containing the word ‘heartfelt’ reads:

“The tale is heartfelt but the technique is shot”

I don’t know about you but the second half of that sentence isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement is it?

What about the remote chance that another Guardian writer found the film to his liking and also used the word ‘heartfelt’?

No, that didn’t happen.

Although not quite up there with ‘freelance runners‘ from UK distributors planting comments on blogs or the major studio who invented a critic to lavish praise on its own movies, it’s still pretty misleading.

The Advertising Standards Authority is the body that regulates the UK advertising industry and its code of practice states:

“no marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise”

In this case, I think the quote on the Huge DVD cover misleads by omission.

Can you think of any other examples of reviews taken out of context?

> Guardian review of Huge
> Huge at the IMDb
> BBC News on the legal fallout in 2005 from a studio inventing quotes
> ASA