Drive, the critically praised Ryan Gosling thriller about a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway car driver, is many things: A love story, a heist film, an operatic gore-fest. Another installment of the oft-derided Fast and the Furious car racing series, however, it is not. And that's making one moviegoer quite angry. Michigan resident Sarah Deming is suing the studio that distributed Drive and the theater where she saw it, claiming that trailers sold the film as a Fast and the Furious-like blockbuster. Instead, she complains, the movie "bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film… having very little driving." (She also rather oddly complains that the film is anti-Semitic.) Critics, particularly those who loved the film, have been quick to label the lawsuit "frivolous" and "stupid." Here, some of the best quips:
The end of Hollywood
Should Deming's lawsuit succeed, says Lauri Apple at Gawker, the new precedent might "put Hollywood out of business! Nothing wrong with that outcome."
Compare and contrast
We actually watched both trailers, says Oliver Lyttleton at Indie Wire. "Not a lot of opera in that Fast Five trailer, is there?" This lawsuit will obviously fail, but "maybe there's someone that Deming can sue" for her own terrible taste.
Finally!
"This is a fantastic development in the history of Hollywood," says MaryAnn Johanson at Flick Filosopher, "and is sure to ensure us better, more entertaining, and more vehicular-explosiony movies in the future."
Enough is enough
"There have already been five installments in the F&F franchise that, with the exception of the mind-blowing art of Tokyo Drift, are pretty much interchangeable," says Scott Marks at San Diego Reader. "Is there really someone out there begging for more?"
Change we can believe in
Finally, someone is taking studios to task for releasing misleading trailers, says Jen Chaney at The Washington Post. "For everyone who ever went to see Knight & Day expecting a medieval romance, was disappointed to find out that Rio wasn't a Duran Duran biopic, or thought that Abduction wouldn't stink" — well, folks, "this is your Erin Brockovich moment."
