Was the absolutely staggering increase in advertising before movies incremental, or did they just lay it all down at once? I don’t go to the movies all that often, but it seems like every time I do the amount of bullshit they play before the movie gets a little longer and a lot more annoying. I don’t think they used to play commercials for fabric softener and life insurance before movies, did they? I remember there always being trailers, but didn’t all the trailers used to be for… umm… movies? You know – because you were at a movie theater? Now they’re hawking TV shows, products and services, and they’re not even doing it in a widescreen format. They just leave black bars on either side of the screen. How long before they start using those bars to play other, smaller ads? Maybe I should write them a letter and suggest it. As it stands, it’s kind of a waste.

We went to go see The Simpsons Movie last night (which was okay), and we were advised to line up a good half hour before the movie started. What that meant was that we ended up enduring a full hour of dumbed-down movie trivia (one of the answers was actually “The Simpsons Movie” – wrap your head around that one) and advertising. After a half hour of trivia and celebrity quotes and Coke ads, we were actually relieved when the lights dimmed and – gasp – they started playing actual advertisements. You know – ones with pictures that actually move. Geena Davis told us that if we bought refreshments something charitable would happen (can’t remember what), Tide is fucking awesome, and a bunch of TV shows I will never watch will be airing in September. Then finally, after a mind-numbling 15 minutes or so, we finally got to the main course: trailers for other movies. Here’s a quick rundown.

Alvin & The Chipmunks

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In 1958, Ross Bagdasarian (who also recorded the hit song “The Witch Doctor”) figured out that speeding up an audio track of a person singing sounds funny. The discovery won him two Grammy Awards, a long-running cartoon spinoff, and the distinguished position of Most Annoying Man Of The 20th Century. 50 years later, it looks like children are just as stupid and easy to please as they were back then. It also looks like Jason Lee’s career is over.

The Game Plan

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Did you miss The Pacifier because you thought it looked like the most retarded thing ever, or because you were just waiting for someone to make the same movie with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson instead of Vin Diesel? Let me explain to you why it’s funny: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is very manly, and parenting (especially a daughter) is for chicks. Also noteworthy: “The Rock” is starting to use his actual birth name in conjunction with his wrestling name. Did somebody say “serious acting aspirations”?

Stardust

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A meteor crashes into the Earth but it turns out that it’s an angel and there’s magic and witches and shit like that. Oh, and Robert De Niro is a space pirate. It’s like they force-fed a French guy some ecstasy, threw him in front of a word processor and said “just type whatever sounds cool to you right now.”

Fred Claus

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This one looks like it’s going to fall into the “naughty Christmas movie” genre established by movies like “Bad Santa,” “Badder Santa,” and “Badder Santa: The Unrated Version” (in which Billy Bob Thornton murders every other character in the movie with an axe while swearing a lot (with hilarious results)), Fred Claus is about Santa Claus’s relationship with his brother (Vince Vaughn), who doesn’t wear a red suit, doesn’t have a beard, and does not deliver presents to children. Instead, the eponymous Fred Claus looks, talks, and acts exactly like Vince Vaughn. You know – like a dude. I’m not even gonna talk shit about this one, actually, because after enduring the crap listed above, this one actually seemed like it might be worth watching.

Good lord. Every single trailer I saw last night before The Simpsons Movie sucked.