The other day I was sitting on IRC, shooting the shit with some people in a ninja hidden channel you probably don’t know about because you’re not k-rad like us. Someone linked up a movie as a joke saying “it’s about affiliate marketing”. I was like wow, really, someone made a movie about our industry that’s not some boring dry technical thing, a fictional one with guns and capers and fake blood. Wow! This needed to be reviewed. Just don’t forget that you saw it here first folks.
So, Tonight I finally found the time to sit down and mostly watch Ladrón que roba a ladrón (To Rob A Thief). It’s what appears to be a made for TV movie, or at least the camera work, sounds and overall lighting don’t make it look like a theatrical release but alas I don’t live in Mexico, so I could be totally wrong on that one. That’s not to say it “looks horrible”, but it looks like something made for the Hallmark channel, not your local cineplex. The actors seemed pretty good to me on the whole, though I don’t know the language so maybe they were emoting totally wrong, let me know in the comments if you’ve seen it too.
The movie starts out showing us Moctesuma Valdez, the infomercial king of Central America. He sells products on TV like Vince Offer or Tony Little, hawking everything from diet pills to food processors and the people watching the show are obviously eating it up as it cuts back and forth between them showing them wanting to lose weight or process food or whatever. Okay, maybe it wasn’t food processing but it was like 2 hours ago, I forget. You get the idea.
Fast forward a little bit, we meet an eager group of people ready to rip this guy off (the affiliates) because he was selling legitimate products to Latino immigrants. Hey, makes sense right? They were doing the same thing as him, but now wanted his money. They’re headed by two former thieves who feel now is just the right time to pull of a big caper and steal the big one to retire. However the affiliates all chicken shit out of the plan to use day laborers, so they decide to use the real thing for extra movie time drama.
Uh oh! Time for the hijinx to begin. What follows next is about 1.25 hours of planning, and development of how they are going to get back at this guy and steal his informercial monies. This was meant to take about 2 weeks “in real life”, and it almost felt like it in “movie life” too. I feel as though it could have been around 40 minutes shorter and still had the same effect. I was kinda bored throughout lots of it and kinda wasn’t watching while they planned out the whole shebang, because it didn’t really matter – we’d see it at the end anyway.
Anyway, the chick was kinda hot and she was spunky so that was fun to look at for most of the movie. The guy who tried to look a lot like Antonio Banderas was also funny sometimes too, in a “haha you’re lame” kinda way.
Anyways.
After the boring middle part then it gets to the “real” action. The evil affiliate marketer mentioned above had a party at his big blingin’ mansion in California and the team set to work with their fancy outfits to rob his ass. Some of them crawl through air conditioners and some of them dress as waiters, and some of them even mingle with the guests to blend in while the money is underway of being stolen. It’s a super original plot I thought.
This is TV land so their plan goes off with pretty much no trouble, and there’s a crazy surprise (omg!) twist at the end, but, if you paid any attention at all you totally would see it coming anyway. The best part was what they left in the safe. The guys products. That musta stung.
I didn’t really give any spoilers away except for the pictures of the bottles. So if you feel like wasting two hours and watching something related to the industry, then go nuts. But I wouldn’t recommend planning an evening around this one folks. Save your time for more PPC guys.
Overall: 6/10
Hey! Do you know any other fictional movies about sales, affiliate marketing or internet marketing, or anything related? Let us know in the comments.