The cast of Katie Holmes rom-com The Romantics did a J. Crew ad campaign, and the result is an aneurysm of creamy cupcakes, tasteful khaki, and fresh-faced youth. Katie even exorcises a few Tom Cruise-related demons. Let's take a look.
According to its trailer, The Romantics is about tasteful white people getting married in a scenic white people place. (Maine?) Quoth J. Crew's synergistic The Romantics advertainment: "Friendships and alliances are tested and the love triangle comes to a head the night before the wedding, when the drunken friends frolic in the nearby surf and return to shore… without the groom." That sounds… macabre. (And kind of interesting? I hate it when I accidentally like something I meant to hate.)
The Tivo users among us have decided that they no longer need to watch television commercials, but rest assured that their unpatriotic fast-forwarding will not go unpunished. The entire advertising industry in now engaged in nothing except figuring out how to make TV viewers watch ads whether they want to or not. The most popular method is to try to turn commercials into "shows" themselves, or mix up advertising and actual content so much that you have to watch both. But CBS is raising the question: what if the advertising and the content are equally annoying?
