POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Hot Docs is underway!
Once again, I've decided to go budget and take advantage of the free daytime screenings for students. There are plenty of films that I want to see, and more than enough to fill the free time that I have outside of my regular day-to-day commitments during the festival. There is one film, however, that I'm particularly interested in seeing that I can't attend during the day. So depending on how I feel, I might end up buying a ticket for the evening screening of the film.
As a Student or Senior, any screenings before 6pm are free. The catch is that you can only get tickets the day of. So, if the film has already gone Rush, you need to wait in that Rush line. I'm not opposed to it, but it just means being prepared for it.

Today, I Rushed POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (official website here).
In this documentary, director Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame - I still haven't watched this film) makes a film about product placement and corporate partnerships with product placement and corporate partnerships.
It was a nice, lighthearted movie to get the festival started. Unfortunately, Morgan wasn't in attendance for the screening (he was at the screening last night - this was the festival's opening film) as he needed to be back in New York to continue to promote his film.
This film actually appeared on my radar after seeing his appearance on the Conan Show. On the show, he talked about the premise of the show while wearing a custom-made sponsorship suit, accompanied by a small pony. The punchline of the pony involvement was probably my highlight of the film itself.
As for a review of the film, well, I thought it was okay. I enjoyed it, I laughed out loud, but it was a relatively on-the-surface documentary. I wasn't surprised by anything that I saw, but I'm not sure that it was meant to be anything more than that. There was a nice mixture of advertising spots and documentary, and of course the whole product placement aspect of the film. I admit that I got a little bit of product placement fatigue by the end of the film. The punchlines were so obvious that it wasn't annoying per se, but by the end, I kind of wished that he had somehow taken it to the next level. I mean, for the first while the audience would chuckle anytime there was product placement on the screen, but by the end, there wasn't much of an audible response, and I would think that as a filmmaker, you want to have your film build towards the end, and although there was a small payoff there (yes, a very predictable one), the meat of it kind of fizzled in my opinion.
Again, that's not to say that it was a bad film. I laughed, and that's probably the most important thing. I do think that he did a good job of poking fun at the whole idea. I also kind of wish that he somehow made more of the final credits (although there are a couple great moments there too). I do like how he weaved in his process of putting together the film as well as the obligatory doc-type interviews with notable/credible people in the field. Maybe not the "Greatest Movie" I've ever seen, but it still works. The concept is pretty hilarious and witty in itself, so it can't help but be good.
Oh, and on the way out, we got a small bottle of POM Wonderful.
Nice.

- picture courtesy of www.sonyclassics.com/pomwonderfulpresentsthegreatestmovieeversold