Feeling deceived by a movie trailer, Michigan native Sarah Deming decided to sue its distributor for being misleading under her state’s Consumer Protection Act. She claims that the trailer for Drive made her think it would be like Fast Five (compare trailers below), and she felt tricked into seeing an inferior film. Film critics would disagree with that latter assessment, giving the film strong reviews and awarding the film the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
In her complaint, filed in the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Michigan, Deming states distributor Distribution LLC “promoted the film DRIVE as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies” and that it “bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film…having very little driving in the motion picture.” Feeling she was duped into a bad movie, she decided to sue. An anchor for the local press, in a rather inept parroting of the complaint called the critically acclaimed film “an even worse movie” than its trailer.
Deming took her assertions a step further in accusing the film of antisemitism, claiming DRIVE “contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith.” (Did someone tell Albert Brooks or Ron Perlman before they signed up?) It appears Deming was shocked, just shocked, at the presence of Jewish mobsters, clearly unaware of a long history that found its way into no less a film than The Godfather Part II (which Deming probably would’ve sued for not being Scarface).
If you agree with Deming and would love to join her. Well, you’re in luck: She’s hoping it will turn into a class action
For your consideration, trailers of Drive and Fast Five are below:
Bobak is a myth, he doesn't exist.
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Read the comments below or add one of your own.
Is this woman unfamiliar with movie reviews?
Is there some teeny tiny type on a movie ticket that guarantees (a) a good time, (b) exactly
what you expected, or (c) the movie you would have made if you were doing it yourself.
Please, your Honor, dismiss this with all of the prejudice it deserves.
I think you are missing the real story here. Unless this woman filed the complaint herself, a lawyer helped her with this nonsense. Time after time when we read about the latest ridiculous overreach folks forget that much of this stuff would not happen if lawyers were exercising a modest oversight role over our legal system. It doesn’t matter that she will go down the street and get someone else to do it. Refuse to participate.
If enough lawyers refuse to advance ludicrous claims such claims will will decrease- perhaps they will even disappear.
Then you won’t be able to report such stupidity as news. Oh forgive me. Never mind.
Another argument for “loser pays”
Man, this Drive movie is a worst rip off of the French Connection than Fast and the Furious. But hey, at least the woman suing didn’t buy cantaloupe only expecting cantaloupe and not a deadly food virus that makes you crap yourself to death: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2011/10/03/cantaloupe-listeria-outbreak-recall-lotta-lawsuits/
Someone should have done the same thing with “Coyote Ugly”. Heavily advertized as, shall we say, a “guys movie” but it ended up being a through-and-through “chick flick”. How many college-aged men wasted their money on that one?
Maybe it’s because we just finished FRCP Rule 11 in class, but this screams frivolous complaint to me.