What is going on with the poster for Kumail Nanjiani’s new movie?

By Joe Berkowitz

What: The official poster for upcoming action-comedy Stuber.

Who: Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Bautista, and a 20th Century Fox marketing team with a lot to answer for.

Why we care: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Here is the impression that potentially millions of people will have of the upcoming summer action-comedy Stuber.

Look at this mess. Just look at it! Did 20th Century Fox hire some bizarro-world version of Marie Kondo who took the original, spare poster art and worked tirelessly to fill the frame with things that spark huh?

All we need here is something that shows your favorite new comedic movie star Kumail Nanjiani taking the Pineapple Express train to Yuktown with the not-so-secret weapon of Guardians of the Galaxy, Dave Bautista. That’s it! Instead, this is essentially the Stefon version of a Marvel movie poster. It’s got everything: a pit bull, a crossbow, rando cops, a selfie-ing Betty Gilpin—and two shirtless, jacked guys, one of whom is wearing a panda head. Who needs this much visual information about Stuber? It’s an Uber driver taking a cop on the chase of their lives. There’s no need to immortalize everyone they bump into on the road to saving the day.

Which brings us to the slogan: “Saving the day takes a pair.” Do you get it? Do you get the joke? See, there’s two of them—just like the number of testicles, famously the number-one thing required for day-saving.

What are we even doing here? It’s the most generic, anonymous slogan I can recall, and that’s saying something, because the reason I can’t recall a worse one is that pretty much all slogans are bad. This one’s just notably bad. “Saving the day takes a pair” could be slotted in as the tagline for literally any action comedy ever starring two people. 48 Hours. The Other Guys. Central Intelligence. It would work for any of them, and it would make them sound just as much like garbage as it makes this movie sound.

Also, saving the day most certainly does not take a pair, in either meaning of the asinine double entendre. As the heroes of, say, The Heat, will tell you, sometimes saving the day takes two pairs of ovaries. Sometimes it takes a team; other times, an incredibly gifted solo hero. The marketing people who farted out this slogan would have you believe otherwise, though.

Sometimes you see a terrible movie poster and it takes a pair of beers to save the day.

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