How to spot movies that stink

Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, manages to plow ludicrous amounts of money into movies that should never have been made. So how do you, the consumer, spot these turds before spending your hard-earned money at the theater?

Easy. The more money has been spent on a movie and the crappier it is, the more money will be spent on advertising for the movie before it opens.

The rule of thumb is, the earlier ads for a movie show up, the worse that movie is. The amount of advertising that shows up is related to how much money has already been sunk into the stink bomb. If you are mathematically inclined, feel free to put that into a formula.

So, if a month before “Death Mega Watch” opens at a friendly multiplex near you, you start seeing ads for it, it is probably crap. Increase the crap factor each time you see an ad for “Death Mega Watch,” and if you watch a lot of TV you’ll probably be able to predict pretty accurately just how bad the movie is.

Why do the studios waste money like that? Simple. They know they have a stinker on their hands, and they know that word of mouth is going to kill them, so they want to pack the theaters as full as possible on opening weekend. After opening weekend, only people without friends to warn them off will see these abominations.