By Anastasia Roussel

MAX:
A Review by Gatsby the WSF mascot


Some people have described Max as heartwarming and colorful, but I could have sworn I saw it in black and white – maybe it’s just me. To be perfectly honest, this family movie about a boy and his dog didn’t exactly have me wagging my tail when I left the theater.  It wasn’t terrible, but it could have been much better. The premise felt new and exciting. Max, a military dog with posttraumatic stress disorder is taken in by the rebellious younger brother of the deceased soldier who handled him in Iraq. But instead of sticking to that premise, the filmmakers decided to turn the film into a farfetched action film that feels like Home Alone meets Lassie but takes itself too seriously to realize its all a bit silly.    

Without a doubt, the highlight of the movie is it’s leading thespian, Carlos, a Belgian Malinois who plays the lead character of Max. I haven’t seen that much charisma in an actor since I saw Chris the dog take on the role of Beethoven in the family classic of the same name (how the Academy over looked him for the Leading Actor award still puzzles me to this day.) Carlos is delightfully athletic, emotional, powerful, and yet vulnerable in his portrayal of Max. I just wished he had given Lauren Graham a few pointers. Graham, who played the boy’s mother and was previously seen starring in The Gilmore Girls, delivers a performance that is tragically opposite of that of Carlos. Close to the ending of the movie, she gives a speech to some policemen and the music behind her words tells us that we should be inspired, but I really just felt like saying “Okay… moving on…” The rest of the cast was decent, nothing outstanding, though the two Rottweilers who portrayed Max’s nemeses were also incredibly physical and menacing. Between us though, I think I could have taken them.      

Max is a film with very good intentions that attempts to honor the men, women, and dogs who put their lives at risk in order to serve their country - I didn’t even know we, dogs, could suffer from PTSD, that was very interesting to learn.  But I believe the movie suffers from a mild identity crisis. It doesn’t know if it’s a drama or a family fun movie. So the fun feels a bit tragic and the drama feels a bit silly.  It’s a movie I might rent for a few dollars but wouldn’t break the wallet to take the whole family to the theater to see.  I give it two-and-a-half barks out of five. 

Tailpiece - An Afterword…

Friends, this was Gatsby’s last movie review for his blog “Gatsby’s Corner”. Our beloved Gatsby passed away during surgery to remove a tumor in his stomach on Saturday 7/18/15 around 4:30pm. Though we knew the risks it came as a shock to us all, even his surgeon and doctors. We had a whole team of healers in place to help Gatsby recovery from surgery and get him in remission so he could enjoy several more happy months with us. But sadly after fighting valiantly he lost his battle with cancer as it had spread throughout his stomach. We are heartbroken but grateful that we could spend a final hour with him while he slept under anesthesia to hold and cuddle him, tell him how much we loved him, and that it was okay to let go and make his transition over the rainbow bridge. Gatsby was loved beyond measure and he touched many lives. We have already been overwhelmed with the outpouring of loving messages we have received.  Every client, or visitor to our office knew what a special dog Gatsby was. Though he was protective of us his personality and nature was kind and gentle - unconditional love personified. He will be missed immensely and never ever be forgotten! Rest in peace sweet boy.

By Nicolas Pinzon

So this is not the first time we focus on branded content in one of our blogs, and I’ll be honest with you guys, branded content is one of our favorite topics. If you didn't happen to read our previous blogs on the subject, I recommend you scroll down to “Branded Content: The Future Of Advertising Is Now” and give that a read. But in a nutshell, branded content is any form of media that functions equally as entertainment as it does as advertisement. Quality branded content exemplifies and promotes the values of a brand by entertaining viewers while never seeming like a commercial. In the above blog we examined what branded content is and discussed multiple, mostly short format, examples of it. But in this blog we’ll concentrate on longer format branded content and, more specifically, the massively successful branded content feature, The Lego Movie. We’ll address the question of what made this particular example of branded content so successful and translate that to smaller companies, content lengths and budgets.  


Branded content is about creating a narrative and a conversation with the customer. That is probably the main thing Lego understood. Lego created a narrative in the sense of a story, and to Lego, the story always came first. Lego knew the essence of its brand and made a movie about that, not about selling toys. Playing with Legos is all about the marriage, and sometimes conflict, between following the directions on the box and following your own creativity and imagination about what each Lego piece can be when it is connected to another. That was what The Lego Movie was about; the quest to find the perfect equilibrium between creativity and order. It was all about the story and the core values of what Lego is. As a result, the Lego sets and characters that were used in the movie felt less like product placement and more like fitting narrative elements of the film’s universe.  We became involved in the narrative and never realized that, in many ways, we were watching a long Lego commercial.  
 

Yet, before there was even a narrative, Lego had already begun its conversation with its customers years earlier. Lego involved its core followers when The Lego Movie was only in pre-production by creating a contest in which people all over the world were encouraged to create any sort of vehicle using Lego pieces that were designed for something else. For example, create a tank out of a set designed for an airplane. The creations of the winners would be featured in the movie. This sort of contest was successful not only because it started a dialogue with core audiences but because the dialogue that it started was about those core themes and values of the Lego brand and, subsequently, of the Lego movie: Follow the instructions vs. create something new.  


This cinematic piece of branded content, budgeted at $60 million, revitalized Lego sales but also grossed more that $460 million and inspired a future sequel along with numerous spin-off TV series that are themselves also branded content. What is so powerful about branded content as a business strategy is its power to go beyond just one source of revenue and create a dynamic conversation with its targeted audiences from many different fronts and media sources. With this in mind, what made The Lego Movie successful is what makes any piece of branded content successful, regardless of its length, Lego paired up with real filmmakers and crafted a story that stands on its own merit. Whether it’s two minutes, or two hours, that is what all branded content needs to achieve.