UPDATE: Director John Stalberg Jr. got in touch to tell us he cut the trailer himself and in a hurry to have it online for 4/20, and very graciously and profusely apologized for the mix-up. He remains totally cool in our book, and we have promised to get Perri to a screening of the movie so she can call it "fantastic" for real.
Two things are strange about the new trailer for HIGH School, a hilarious stoner comedy that debuted at Sundance this year. First of all, the trailer consists entirely of voiceover from Adrien Brody's terrifying pot dealer character, and doesn't really portray the movie as the heir apparent to Ferris Bueller's Day Off that it actually is. Second, the list of critic's quotes at the end features Perri Nemiroff of Cinema Blend calling it "Fantastic."
On one hand, awesome! Cinema Blend is right there sandwiched between the excellent company of Variety and Cinematical. On the other hand, Perri never reviewed High School for our site. So far as I know, Perri has not seen High School. The quote in the trailer comes from this article, in which Perri posted the new poster for the movie and wrote "HIGH School has a fantastic premise."
What's really bizarre is that I wrote an actual review of HIGH School from Sundance, and though none of my quotes are quite as pull-worthy, I guess, I did call it "a crowdpleaser," "the new century's Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "worth the legal risk" of toking up in the theater. That's not as compact a quote as "Fantastic!" but it's also one that comes from actually seeing the film, not just deducing the premise from the trailers (though Perri's not wrong. It really is a fantastic premise).
Check out all the odd marketing tactics in the trailer below, which debuted today at MySpace. An age gate is required, which you'll understand immediately thanks to the impressive amount of f-bombs the trailer contains.
