Adam Scott’s involvement in a comedy automatically makes it worthy of a viewing. But his involvement doesn’t necessarily mean it will be good. Conversely, a film with an amazing poster will draw me in sometimes even if the plotline doesn’t, despite the fact that it will have way less of an effect on the outcome as the lead actor. And so we have the above poster for Stu Zicherman’s directorial debut A.C.O.D. , courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, which is something of an abomination, even for a Hollywood ensemble comedy. Scott almost looks like he should be in the background of a promo for a Scary Movie sequel, caught in the middle of saying “Oh no he didn’t!”
But don’t be fooled as I was. The simplicity of the poster is intentional, given that the acronym title is a bit tricky for audiences to wrap their heads around (Just look at how that other initialism-titled film R.I.P.D. did, not that titles are everything.) “It’s an ensemble,” Zicherman says, “but Adam is sort of in every scene and is at the center of the family hurricane that is the movie. We tried a bunch of posters with all the different [actors], and it felt like this image summed up the notion of the surprises and the chaos of being an A.C.O.D.” It stands for Adult Child of Divorce, for those unaware. And I give him all the credit in the world for not churning out a Photoshopped poster of all the leads slammed together in one awkward image, but couldn’t this have at least used a still from the film, rather than putting Scott against an all-yellow background? I can almost see him holding up a deuce sign for A.C.O.D. 2.
Poster aside, this sounds like a really great flick, and hopefully the huge cast creates something more memorable than Scott’s co-stars in Friends With Kids. Beyond Scott, it stars his <=""> co-star Amy Poehler, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Catherine O’Hara, Jane Lynch, Richard Jenkins, Clark Duke, Jessica Alba and Adam Pally. Zicherman said part of the goal in making his first film was to “cast the hell out of it.” As you will probably agree, he’s done that in spades.
The film centers on Scott’s character Carter, who is still troubled by his parents’ divorce fifteen years previous. When his younger brother (Duke) gets engaged, he decides to invite their parents (Jenkins and O’Hara) to the wedding, even though they haven’t spoken in 15 years. This, as you can imagine, makes Carter go insane.
“The big thing for us is about awareness of what A.C.O.D. is. Part of the fun is meeting people who realize, ‘Oh my God, I’m part of a club I didn’t even know I was a part of,’” said Zicherman, who says the film is “about becoming an adult, and so much of that is letting go of your childhood and the past.” He adds, “No one has ever really attempted to make a divorce comedy.” Doesn’t he remember the pretty terrible It’s Complicated, or all the films out there just like it?
A.C.O.D. will marry itself to theaters everywhere in October.
