Media Law & Ethics Essay: Is Piracy Actually Helping the Film/TV Industry Rather than Harming It?

“Intellectual property is the oil of the 21^st century. Look at the richest men a hundred years ago; they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today’s richest men have made their money out of intellectual property.”

  -          Mark Getty   (Co-Founder of Getty Images)

In the ever growing culture of the internet, consumers have used online media to easily access for content, whenever it’s the news, videos, buying the latest tech on Amazon, reading information, etc. The internet has made media accessible to a wider market, at the same time allowed people online to pirate content such as film, TV, music, literature without paying the content maker/service any money/ratings whatsoever. While many content makers in the media industry have claimed that piracy is bad, which makes media companies lose money, and won’t allow them to make more of the content people chose to view. While consumers have many reasons to pirate content, it is a conflict with the content maker and the ever growing following of media consumer in which it’s trying to pleased and grow. What If internet piracy is doing the opposite? What if piracy is actually helping the Film/TV Industry, rather than harming it? This written essay will analyse piracy and the effects it has on the media (whenever good or ill), this essay analyses will be based on the ethics of four quadrants model created by Harvard Divinity School professor, Ralph Potter, in which he called “The Potter Box”.  The Potter Box four quadrants model consists of Situation, Values, Principles, and Loyalties. The essay will be using the four quadrants by Ralph Potter, to essentially break down the subject of piracy step by step with an ethical approach, offering a conclusion to support this essay’s written hypothesis. The first part of the essay, which will be look at the situation of piracy and how it supports the Film/TV industry, rather than harming will now begin.

In today’s society, media content is everywhere, access to multiple information on the news, TV Shows, film, book, and games can found with a click of a button or an app on your mobile phone. While the access to various content has been good business wise to both the content maker/provider, and the ever hungry media consumer viewing these products. However there is a dark side for content being up on the web, internet piracy. Downloading a film/TV show that has not been officially release on home video or on demand by providers like Netflix, and content provider channel’s site yet is consider by the law stealing. A January 2014 article on the website Torrent Freak estimated that most used/popular illegal content downloading site is The Pirate Bay, along KickassTorrents in second place, and Trrentz in third place (this essay won’t get into rest of the 7 other sites). A report by The Directors Guild in America (DGA) in 2010 shows that the film industry $25 billion is lost annual in the U.S. due to global piracy. The website Go-Gulf also reported that 71,060 jobs were lost due to internet piracy, along with $ 2.7 billion earnings lost each year due to piracy. 146 million are visited on illegal downloading sites each day, in only 100,000 visit per minute, totally 53 billion visit per year. The DGA reported in 2010 by the year 2013, 90% of video will make up of internet trafficking, and 131% of annual increase of wireless data traffic per year. The DGA also estimated that by 2015, 1.2 million jobs in the European Union’s creative industries will be lost due to online piracy. A recent UK IP crime report shows that the United States hosts the most pirated media sites than any other country by a total of 30%, while Canada is only by 2% of world hosting website containing pirated material. Speaking of Canada, a 2011 report shows that more than $ 1.8 billion and 12,600 full time jobs were lost in the Canadian economy of 2009-10 due to piracy.

But what if piracy hade a completely different effect, what if it was helping content itself, and creators making it, rather than harming it? In 2012, a report shows that the highly popular HBO Epic Fantasy series, Game of Thrones, based on the bestselling novel series by George R.R. Martin, was reported to be the most pirated show on the internet. When one of the Game of Thrones directors, David Petrarca was asked at the Perth Writer’s Festival about the show being the most pirated on the internet, Petrarca responded suspired everyone at the festival by saying piracy is a good thing, and that “cultural buzz” is what matter to get the word out there. The cast of Game of Thrones however have a different view than Petrarca, cast member Michelle Fairley said that piracy rate of the show is a double edge sword when it comes to consumers downloading the content on pirated sites. Nikolaj Coster - Waldau, co-star of the Game of Thrones series said on BBC that he hoped people pirating the show would buy the DVD set for the show, but they won’t. While current content makers may have doubts, or two sided views regarding internet piracy and legally produced bought/viewed content by its target consumers. Despite initial research made in 2010/11, and the opinions of cast members/one of the directors of Game of Thrones themselves. In 2013, a study by the London School of Economics reveals that illegal downloading might be actually increasing sales, not hurting them. The report has shown that while sales for hard copy DVDs in the home market has decreased, between the years 2001 to 2010, global revenues has increased five percent, and in 2012 the U.S. Film industry was worth a strong $93.7 billion alone. Even though Hollywood claims that piracy hurts the Film/TV industry, The London School of Economics (LSE) reported that in 2012, Hollywood had achieved a record breaking $35 billion globally in box office revenues, making it a six percent increase over the year before. Researchers from the London School conducted that film Industry using digital distribution methods similar to that of illegal file sharing sites model such as The Pirate Bay, BitTorrent, and others that had led to sales success. The media industry is starting to realize that putting their intellectual content on the web can bring marketing advantages, sales increase, which leads to decrease of illegal file sharing. By letting the consumer share the product to others, other potential consumers will support it by buying it. The LSE conducts that people who download illegal content, then to buy more legal content, then those who only buy/view content legally. The LSE wasn’t the only organization in Europe to conduct research on consuming media piracy, in Germany, The German Association for Consumer Research (GFK) discovered that people using torrent sites to download content, tend to go to the movies more than the non-torrent site using consumers. GFK stated that by consumers downloading films, they get more encourage to go the cinema to pay to see a movie. A Danish report in 2010 has shown that 70% of the general public finds piracy socially acceptable, as long as they are not selling it themselves to make a profit. A report in the U.S. by The American Assembly Findings found that people pirating content such as music are more likely to own a large library of music, supporting their content makers themselves, than the people that don’t pirate content. The motive behind people pirating content, is often things such as expensive price to legally purchase content (physical/online), longer release dates in other countries, not being subscribed to certain cable companies which has content/channels exclusively, it’s fast, quick and easy. While pirating content, people downloading content may support content maker by buying merchandise relating to the content they download such as t-shirts, books, toys, board games, etc. The SITUATION being presented in this essay, is not that piracy is both a good/bad thing to content makers, it’s an accessibly problem that results in illegally downloading content. While this essay has mention about research that was being  made about how piracy is hurting jobs in the media industry, Rick Falkvinge, writer for the dedicated news site on internet piracy and copyright, TorrentFreak, recently rebutted by writing that industries/jobs are born from the copy, the film industry was born by copying Thomas Edison’s invention of the motion picture, which Edison and his company Western Electric were often stopping people starting up their own motion picture companies in New York due to “copying” a product. Preventing Edison to prevent their business from starting in New York, Companies such as Warner Bros., Universal, and MGM move their house to Los Angeles, California, and created the US film industry, which is known today as Hollywood. Now that the situation aspect has now been examine, the essay will now look at the ethical values of piracy and how it’s helping the film/TV industry.

The values that is being presented regarding media piracy, how’s it helping content makers, rather than harming is going to be examine thought clauses of the Canadian broadcasting standards guide known as the CAB Code of Ethics. Though the issue of media piracy does not fall into every clause category of the CAB, the issues related to media piracy has fallen into some of the categories regarding Canadian broadcasting code of ethics. Media piracy regarding the content makers, as well as consumers do fall under the first clause of the CAB, General Programming. Content makers/producers have a responsibly to recognize/provide the various taste of its viewers, and giving them content that relates to various genres of TV series/films. It could also fall under providing that said content of whatever subject/genre to be accessible to various platforms (such as cable, on demand sites such as Netflix, TV station website, etc.) to help bring in/grow that audience if they are to use pirated like techniques to encourage viewers to watch content more legally. Due to the essay itself presenting both viewpoints of internet piracy in the situation section, the subject can also land under Clause 7 – Controversial Public Issues. It’s important for the Broadcast industry to display both sides of piracy in a non-bias objective view point to the viewer, as well as putting up all the facts, opinions by various experts and everyday people.  By creating merchandise, putting content on the web, letting people view/sharing the content free (legal or pirated) on the web in which early in the essay David Petrarca dubbed “cultural buzz”. It’s fair to say this aspect of piracy helping the media with word of mouth via web (regardless of law), merchandising (t-shirts, DVD sets, collector toys, etc.) can fall under Clause 13 – Advertising (General Principles) under section A. Using section A to make media consumers aware of content, related merchandise, and make the availability of content as strong/easy as possible (access & price). By making visual content accessible, illegal piracy will more likely decrease, by making it easy for many to view content on any device (TV, phone, computer, etc.), whenever time they want. Making content makers serve, invest with their audience/fans, a group otherwise known a community, which serves under Clause 16 of the CAB Code of Ethics; Community Activities. The values section of this analysis using the Potter Box method has reached it conclusion, the essay will now examine the third section of the Potter Box, the principles dealing with TV/film piracy on the web.

As the concept of media piracy indirectly supporting media by making content maker distribute their film/TV series to legal online sites (Netflix, Apple Store, etc.) with an affordable price, to fight fire with fire of the file sharing market, allowing consumers enjoy content more accessibly on any viewing device. It’s putting people first, instead of thinking the industry standard of releasing content only on cable paid TV networks, movie theatres, and hard copy DVDs on the home market. This kind of business mentality of putting people first ahead of established organization, is a moral philosophical principle that dates back to the mid-1800s called Utilitarian Ethics by British thinker John Stuart Mill. Mill believed that right thing to do is think, and help the greater number of people. A majority rule school of thought that is a reflection of democracy, by letting the people know, and decide what they want. One might ask, has any broadcasting corporation, production company or even another individual have embraced Mill’s utilitarian principle of thought (perhaps a similar approach) when it came it distributing content? The answer to that question may come from the on - demand distribution company known as Netflix, and Academy/Emmy award winning actor Kevin Spacey. At the Edinburgh International Television Festival in England, of regards towards Spacey’s hit Netflix exclusive series, House of Cards, as well as Netflix business model and the future of television. Spacey urged networks/content makers to embrace the Netflix business model, don’t end up with the same fate music industry, release an entire season of a series, with an adorable price, that the audience wants the control, the accessibility, the freedom to view the entire season of a show however they want, when they want, on whatever viewing device pleases them (Computer, phone, TV, etc.). Spacey also wants content makers to embrace online community with Facebook pages, encouraging fans by making fan pages, sites, memes, letting spread the word on the show/film (or dubbed “cultural buzz” as David Petrarca puts from above the first part of the essay). By doing this, Spacey believes that content makers can “take a bite out of piracy”, but adding that some will still pirate media. A statement made by Spacey that may be actually happening at the moment, an article by the Independent reported in 2013 the recent research conducted in Norway has shown that while that 260 million TV shows and films were downloaded in 2008, but has a major dropped to 120 million in 2013. The Norwegian continue stating that legal streaming services like Netflix has given consumers a more reliable platform that file sharing torrents. Netflix itself also reveals that they study what’s being the most popular show or film currently pirated on torrent sites, and will try to buy the licencing rights for the film or TV show by the actual disturber. Though shows such as Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, and Prison Break have landed onto to Netflix. Content from HBO has not been distribute on Netflix, but rather decides to compete with Netflix with the release of an HBO streaming service in 2015 (echoing back earlier in the essay of Rick Falkvinge’s article on how industries copy each other, which creates jobs, competition, and growth) in the US (as mention before that piracy is the result of consumers not been able to access content due to shipment date, exclusive content by limited amount of providers) and won’t be available in Canada for now.  The broadcasting business model embrace by Netflix (soon HBO internet streaming service) of giving consumer what they want, studying what most people pirate on the internet shows the piracy DOES indirectly helps the film/TV industry, and by doing this reflects the Utilitarian Ethics model made by John Stuart Mill. In conclusion of the principles section of the essay, the concept of media piracy actually helping the TV/film industry is a principle based on the Utilitarian Ethics of John Stuart Mill.

In this essay regarding internet piracy and the indirect positive effects it has on the TV/film industry, the essay first analysed the situation of piracy, the values of it based on the CAB Code of Ethics, the moral principles regarding the content makers, and their target consumer based on the Utilitarian Ethics of John Stuart Mill. Despite the essay analyzing these three aspects regarding media piracy, displaying the real problem is an accessibility roadblock for the consumer to view content, which results in piracy. One person might ask what loyalties should broadcasters/content makers serve towards? Should they serve themselves and decide how they distribute it themselves? Traditional broadcast standards to please employers? As mention above, reports were told that piracy is most often a result of people not able to acquire that content (via high price, not able to find hard copy, longer release date in other country, etc.), but research has shown that the file sharing community has supported content creators via buying merchandise relating to content they pirate, they have a larger media library then the ones who don’t, and more encourage to go to the movies.  The values behind it are more to do with advertising the content (“cultural buzz”), and serving your community by letting the audience gain better access to content with similar pirate like distribution via on demands services such as Netflix. Which leads Spacey’s urge to give the audience what they want, reflecting utilitarian principles of John Stuart Mill. All this being mention leads to for content maker to be loyal to their viewers watch their program, at the end of the day the content is being made for media consumers to view. Spacey puts it at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, that people are hungry for story. At the Tribeca Film Festival, coordinator Cara Cusumano states the film industry should ignore piracy, embracing the internet, and video on demand services for future distribution. Cusumano said in an interview that “Piracy is less about people not wanting to pay and more about wanting the immediacy – people saying I want to watch Spider-Man right now and downloading it.” Cara concludes by saying “I think that if companies were willing to put that material out there, moving forward, consumers will follow.” In conclusion to loyalties, as well as the entire essay. By giving viewers what they want, making the content easy to find, thus content makers are being loyal to their audience, by that they want to watch the entire content at their control.

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Blue Velvet: An Analysis Essay of David Lynch’s Screenplay

Writer/Director: David Lynch

Studio: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

Starring: 
Kyle MacLachlan 

Dennis Hopper
Isabella Rossellini
Laura Dern
Genre: Neo Noir

Rating: R 
Running Time: 120 minutes 
In order for a film to be made, an idea must come first, then a script is written to be used to film it as a full length motion picture. What mostly makes a film is great, when the script is well written. A great script contains believable characters, suspense, themes, symbolism character development, a plot that gets you hooked by the first page, and great (or witty) dialogue. Blue Velvet is one of those films that contains all these features of a great script, to this day, it has been consider one of the most critically acclaimed  films of all time, and especially influential piece of the Neo Noir/Southern Gothic/Postmodern genre of film. This essay will analyse the script of Blue Velvet based on its characters (motivation, and archetype), themes/symbolism of the film’s major two plot devices (the ear and the insects), and an analysis of the ending (The Robin at the end of the film). Let’s take a look of this article, as it explores and analyse the script for Blue Velvet.

The first section of this essay will explore the characters of Blue Velvet, this part will analyse the character’s gender roles, age, archetypal traits, and development arc throughout the film. Often in a written story of any kind, we must have a main character that is the focus of the story.  In a film that take something simple like a small town, and turns it over its head to complete surrealism, you need a main character that is relatable, that the audience can focus on throughout the film, his name is Jeffery Beaumont. Jeffery is the archetypical hero of the story, he’s an ordinary college student to thrown in a surreal like (horrific to be exact) circumstance. After finding a missing ear, Jeffery must solve the case, which leads to a bigger situation, one involving a mentally unstable man, and a femme fatale. In Jeffery’s quest to find the owner of missing ear, he encounters the four key people; Sandy Williams, Dorothy Vallens, the Yellow Man, and Frank Booth. What makes the four key characters as well as Jeffery interesting that many of the audience watching this movie don’t realize, is that these characters are based on mythic/1930s noir archetypes. Jeffery as being mention before as the classic everyman archetype, Sandy being the innocent maiden, Dorothy being the femme fatale (with a twist on the archetype), and Frank Booth is the devil. The Yellow Man is interesting, you would think the color of his suit would represents happiness and joy, but yellow if dull represents caution and decay due to working with Frank, and the lobotomy he receives from him. Dorothy is a different from most femme fatale’s from 1930’s to 50s noir films. Yes, she seduces Jeffery, but what makes her unique is that she’s a mother whose husband (owner of the ear) and son are held hostage by Frank to stratify his sexual hunger. Frank personally split and him saying “mommy wants to fuck!” with a tiny voice while being high from the gas tank he inhales hints that Frank may have been abuse sexually as a child (from his mother perhaps, which would explain him abuse Dorothy as a way to possibly repress his anger from a past event). Sandy is innocent, she‘s kind, wants to help Jeffery, believes in justice, yet there is no sense of badness to her. Sandy is even willing to forgive Jeffery from the affair he had with Dorothy. Writer/director David Lynch borrows archetypes from past works of film from 1930s to 50’s, but toys with their status and deconstructs them, which makes Blue Velvet’s script a part of postmodern film. The first paragraph of this essay has ended.

The second section of this essay will examine the many themes, and symbolisms that are presented from Blue Velvet’s script. This will also explore many theories of the script from movie goers and myself. Blue Velvet many themes and symbolism is what adds for great weight and strengths in the script that was written by David Lynch, this is probably the shorter aspect of the essay, but is none the less is important as the first one. When Jeffery first finds the served ear in the open yard after his father’s heart attack, both his father’s stroke and the ear represents the town Jeffery lives in, and how something small and innocent as a little town could carry something sinister with it, foreshadowing the event of the film latter on. The common use of incest being in the film is important, it’s not just use in the script for an excuse for David Lynch is film swarming insects underground. It’s used because the incest’s swarming underground from the served ear represents Frank’s gas mask he uses to inhale the gas, the mask itself resembles an insect, which both are nasty and creepy. The fact the insects are swarming underground from the served ear symbolizes two thing, one is that Frank cut off Dorothy’s husband’s ear, and two is that underground symbolizes hell as frank is the devil archetype. This part of the analysis has reach its conclusion, and now head towards the final part of the essay.

In the final part of this analysis essay. I will intrepid the ending of Blue Velvet based the Robin that had the incest in its mouth., in the dialogue of script, Sandy said while walking with Jeffery at night that she had a dream of a Robin, that she felt happiness from just seeing it, thus was foreshadowing its ending. At the very end of the movie, Jeffery and Sandy sees a robin holding an insect from its mouth. The robin’s red colors repent love, while the black insect that the robin was eating represents Frank Booth, symbolizing that love will conquer evil.  What makes Blue Velvet one of most interesting film of its time, was despite being a dark film, it has one of the most optimist endings for a neo noir film, Jeffery lives a happy life, Dorothy gets her child back, Sandy forgive Jeffery, and Frank is dead. Lynch gives the script humanity in this dark strange world that he’s created. In conclusion, this is what the Robin eating the insect symbolized in the script.

Now that I’ve explained the characters, the two plot device, and the actual meaning of the ending from David Lynch’s script for Blue Velvet. I hope that you the reader of this article will put these thoughts when you consider reading script, or watching the film Blue Velvet based on these three contexts that were put in this essay. I hope you will have a new understanding, and appreciation for Blue Velvet. This analysis essay on the script for Blue Velvet has now been concluded.

                      

                                                

                  

Saga Vol 1 Review

Written By: Brian K. Vaughan

Art By: Fiona Staples

Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy

Publisher: Image Comics

Ranking: ****/***** Stars

When I heard that Brian K. Vaughan (writer of Lost, Runaways, Y The Last Man) was going to return in writing comics, I was excited. After a little hiatus in comics writing, as well as being one of the writers of  TV series Lost, it was about time Vaughan return writing in the comic medium. Lets just say after reading the first volume of Saga, I was quite impressed.

Saga is technically Game of Thrones meets Star Wars, it's set in a very strange alien galaxy like Star Wars, with the tone being dark, and R rated like Game of Thrones. The first volume centres around two alien couples, Marko (a Faun like alien) and Alana (a harpy like alien), who recently gave birth to a hybrid name Hazel, and both their races are in a interplanetary war. Since having a child mixed of two different alien races is illegal in this world, both Marko and Alana are hunted by their own kin, and freelancing bounty hunters.

Right off the bat, after reading the first chapter, I was hooked instantly, as I continued reading Saga, nothing really life changing or epic has happen, but their is a lot of set up in the book, right in the beginning Hazel narrates the book and tells the reader that her father, Marko will save the universe, which will be most likely foreshadow in the final volume in the near future. The most interesting part of the book are the supporting cast, The Will, a freelancing bounty hunter with a Lying Cat as a sidekick. A character who's hunting Marko and Alana, at the same time has a heart of gold. The other supporting cast, Prince Robot IV of the Robot Kingdom, the antagonist of the volume, has a pregnant robot wife, can only see her and his child if he kills Marko and Alana (apparently in this world, robot and get other robots pregnant, I know it's sounds insane,  but so are other things in this book that I don't want to spoil).

The art in the book is fantastic, Fiona Staples art fits and sets the tone for this entire series. Vaughan's imagination is strong and out their, each character although living in a sci-fi setting, are very grounded and don't feel two dimensional. My only problem with the book is it's more set up, nothing really big happens, I hope Vaughan does a good payoff in the final act of the series. I should warn reader that this book has extreme violence and graphic sex scenes, I would not recommend it to the faint of heart or to kids. If you are like 16 years old, and can stomach thought the intense panels in the book. I would strongly recommend the book.

The Marine - Review

Cast: John Cena, Robert Patrick, Kelly Carlson

Screenplay: Michelle Gallagher, Alan B. McElory

Producers: Vince McMahon, Joel Simon

Director: John Bonito

Running Time: 92 Minutes 

Studio: WWE Films, 20th Century Fox (Distributed)

Before writing this review, I want to make it clear that I'm not a fan of professional wrestling (due to actor John Cena being a professional wrestler, and the film being produced by WWE films) . I have nothing against it, it just doesn't appeal to me. Now on with the review......

I remember seeing The Marine in theaters, I never even heard of this flick, my step siblings wanted to see it, because of John Cena, I though, what could one little action movie do that could hurt. I went to local movie theater with my siblings (note the theater screening was small, and barley anyone was in the seats, first bad sign), when opening text crawl came up, it was so cartoony, and cheesy (second and major bad sign!). I knew straight away it was going to be a really bad movie. If I had to describe The Marine in a few word to sum up the entire movie, it would be this; imagine Commando and the original Die Hard were so unbelievably bad.

The plot is about a former Marine, whose wife gets kidnap by high profile criminals, and that Marine goes on a mission to rescue her. Wow, how original (sarcasm)! Right of the bat, this film fails to be even standard action movie, the acting is mostly horrible,  special effects are awful the script is lazy, painfully cliched, and poorly written. Oh get this, one of the main villain's henchmen always complains throughout the movie to his boss that he's not being treated right by him and the other gain, because he's black.

I. AM. NOT. MAKING. THIS. UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ranking: 0 out of Five Stars

           

     

Jack and Jill Review

Cast: Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino
Story: Ben Zook
Screenplay: Adam Sandler, Steve Koren
Director: Dennis Dugan
Genre: Comedy
Rating: PG
Running Time: 91 Minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures, Happy Madison

It's one thing to watch a bad movie, it's an entirely different thing to watch a horrible comedy. When watching a comedy, you expect to laugh, and have a fun time watching a movie. When the film is not funny at all, you'll get mad, and this movie did that. Jack and Jill is probably one of the worst comedies I've seen in recent years. If I have to describe the entire plot of Jack and Jill in one word, it would be this, lazy.

I should be warning you the reader of this review for spoilers, but I'm not because its so awful,  I need to explain why this movie does not work at all.  

The plot is a film (if I even consider it an ACTUAL film) is about Jack Sadelstein, a big time advertising executive, with a wife and two kids, invite his crazy twin sister Jill (also played by Adam Sandler) to come over on the Thanksgiving holidays. When she decides to stay for a few months, chaos consumes Jack's world. Most of the film is filled with the many painful trademarks of Adam Sandler's produced films (Happy Madison Productions is owned by Adam Sandler, so their's the reason why Jack and Jill got greenlit) such as:

• Various Product Placement: Sony VISO Laptops, Coca-Cola, Pepto Bismol, Duncan Donuts, etc. - CHECK!
• Various forgotten cast members of SNL (Sandler's Buddies) - CHECK
• Dennis Dugan directing - CHECK! 
• Racist jokes - CHECK!
• A-List actors in short cameos for a fat paycheck - CHECK! (Al Pacino gets a major role in this film as himself, thus serving a bigger crime sentence) 
• Random fart jokes and people getting hit in the head (without any setup, buildup, and payoff for joke being setup.) - DOUBLE CHECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The film's pacing is completely rushed, the location sets look incredibly cheep, and obviously green screened (the Lakers stadium as a good example). Jack is just like any other Adam Sandler character not playing a oddball character, Jill is annoying, and unlikable. The film has no major conflict whatsoever, when Jack needs Al Pacino to be in a Duncan Donuts commercial, there is even no stake such as, "if I don't get him in the commercial, I will lose my job!" Really.....its that lazy in writing. Speaking of Al Pacino, what the hell is he doing in a film like this, before seeing Jack and Jill, I respected him as an actor, but there was this one scene in the movie, where Jill is at Pacino's house, plays baseball in his living room, hits the ball hard, it bounces to his Oscar trophy, and smashing it to a million pieces. The moment I saw that, to me it was a metaphor of Al Pacino, destroying his entire career to be in this movie, that breaks my heart. I shut the film off on Netflix after that particular scene, and I didn't bother watching the rest of that movie. Overall, I would not recommend Jack and Jill to anyone (including kids, teens, and even adults), a waste of a production spent to make this abomination.

Ranking: 0 out of 5 Stars