8 Devious Ways Movie Posters Trick You Into Seeing Terrible Films
4. They Present Sarcasm Literally
At what point does it matter what a quote on a poster actually says? If it's being used by a distributor to sell their product it has to be a positive appraisal, right? Thus is the thinking here, where someone gave up looking for a good quote and instead tried to extract praise from extreme criticism. A film so minor it doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page (seriously), The Most Fertile Man In Ireland came and went with nary a notice back in 2001.
Its only claim to fame is not the gravitas (or lack thereof) Kris Marshall brings to the role of a twenty-something-virgin with super-sperm, but the way distributor Samson Films twisted a scathing review by Mark Kermode into positive publicity. The DVD (now out of distribution for some reason) came adorned with shining endorsement from Britain's most trusted critic, who was credited on the box as saying it was "as funny as the title suggests". Now the more astute of you will have noticed the little logic-gap with this; the title isn't funny. Giving the film a panning in The Observer, Kermode's throwaway comment had been twisted, probably as it was the least awful review Samson could find.