The Mark of Zorro: BRANDED Gets an F

The movie that I thought was going to be a huge sleeper was Branded, which came out last Friday. It had all the makings of a movie that will not do well in the box-office but will be excellent and memorable. Last year Warrior was the movie that no one saw but was still great. Let me just say flat out right now that Branded is not this years Warrior but it might be this year's worst film.

Did anyone else who has seen the trailer or this movie think that this looked awesome because that's what I thought? From the trailed I gathered that this movie was about a normal guy that one day "wakes up" and sees all of these alien type things that represent brands and link to people's heads which makes you want to buy more of that product. Now since he has seen the truth he must try and figure out a way to stop them. To me that sounded weird but cool. This movie seemed like it would be a Matrix type movie in the sense that it was unique and had gone where no films had gone before. I will give the film this it did go where no films have gone before but in a really weird and bad way.

So Branded is not actually about the cool, alien fighting story that I assumed it was going to be about. Instead it is about this young advertising genius, Misha (Ed Stoppard), who produces some reality show that uses surgery to make fat girls skinny. However this show is run by the fast food industries and uses this show to get people to think that being fat is beautiful. They do this by having the girl starring in the shoe go into a coma which causes a commotion among the people who say that there was no reason to make her skinny, what's wrong with being fat etcetera...

Wait a second. There is no possible way that I am going to be able to explain this complicated, random plot within reason. The reasoning behind how things happen or the paths this film takes doesn't make any sense. Nothing feels cohesive. For instance this film is narrated by a talking constellation cow. Why is this film narrated by a talking constellation cow? I have no clue. Also the reason that Misha can now see all of the brand aliens is because he sacrificed a cow and poured the blood on himself. What does that even have to do with the brand aliens?

The paths that the film takes are just so weird and random to where you end up hating this film but can't necessarily look away. You want to see where this bizarre film is going to go next and sure enough each path that this film goes is more bizarre than the next.

Also, like I said before, this film is not about cool, brand alien hunting like I thought it was going be. For the first entire half of this movie it's about Misha and his advertising rise and fall and the evil fast food corporations. You don't even see a cool brand alien (yes the brand aliens were in fact cool) until the second half but by then you are bored out of your mind. However when the alien plot does kick in you realize that it is so stupid that you end up liking to boring first half better because things made more sense.

However the major fault of this movie is that whoever wrote this movie was trying to send a message about anti-advertising. It is splattered all over this film. The plot uses evil aliens to represent brands but not once in this film did I ever agree with the point he was trying to make. First off you never end up disliking the aliens because they are fighting not humans but other brand aliens. This is a metaphor for company competition which is encouraged throughout America. Secondly this film is just so random that you sometimes begin to lose sight of the anti-advertising message that this writer is trying to get across to people. In order ro get your message across the film must first be in some way shape or form subtle and reasonable. This film was definetly not subtle about it and definetly did not make any sense and therefore the message was not conveyed.

The only positive things I can think of were the aliens and the metaphor that was used for company competition. Basically when another alien killed a rival alien that company became powerful and the company that was represented by the killed alien went bankrupt. I thought that was clever but the rest was just utter bizarreness, randomness and senselessness. Branded earns the honor of being my first F rating for the Lorton Patch. Congratulations Branded.