This is a real trailer for a real film. It isn’t a spoof or a satire. Same Kind of Different as Me is distributed by Paramount Pictures and stars several Academy Award winners and nominees. It is a real film that people made on purpose.
Why am I telling you this? Because the first trailer for Same Kind of Different as Me has just been released and, well, Christ.
The film is about wealthy married couple Greg Kinnear and Renée Zellweger. As the dullest woman alive, Zellweger’s character is describing a dream she just had, about “a poor wise man who changes the city”.
However, Kinnear and Zellweger are drifting apart. He’s all business, and says things such as “I’ve got a sales call at 6.30” and “I’ve got to drop off contracts north of town”. She’s the sort of idiot who describes offensively tone-deaf dreams about absurd Jesus figures to people. They should split up.
During their shift at a soup kitchen, a crazed vagrant played by Djimon Hounsou starts smashing the place up with a baseball bat. It is a terrifying breach of security, an act of wanton destruction and a safety risk to all the diners who have placed their trust in the institution. People are scared and something needs to be done.
However, Zellweger sees this furious lunatic destroying an important community institution and says: “That’s the man from my dream.” Obviously, nobody in real life would react to a violent vagrant by claiming that they’re a mystical saviour from the depths of their subconscious. But it’s OK. This is a film. It didn’t really happen.
Oh Jesus Christ, it really happened.
Presumably this bit, where Kinnear attempts to befriend Hounsou and Hounsou replies by growling “You wanna be my friend? Well I’m gon’ hafta think about that” in the exact same offensively broad accent that Robert Downey Jr used when he blacked up for Tropic Thunder, happened as well.
That bestseller was We Saved a Black Person by Insane White Guilt.
Back to the story. Jon Voight, played here by Jon Voight, is appalled that Kinnear and Zellweger have befriended a black vagrant, because he hasn’t seen The Blind Side and doesn’t realise that only rich white people can save misunderstood black people.
As an aside, the set designer really went to town with the whole antler motif here, didn’t they?
This is the face that Hounsou pulls when Zellweger tells him that he isn’t a bad person. Gratitude in the face of aggressive condescension. That’s how you can tell that the semi-willing beneficiary of your decision to project a veneer of closer-to-earth mysticism on a total stranger is a keeper.
I hate this film.
Hanging around with Hounsou also teaches Kinnear that there’s more to life than 6.30 sales calls and north-of-town contract drops. There’s also smashing up soup kitchens, inconsistent grammatical errors and allowing berserk white women with the mistaken belief that they have the power of prophesy to forgive you for everything you’ve ever done. Kinnear calls Hounsou “amazing” and I want to sew this film into a sleeping bag and kick it into a lake.
Eventually Hounsou borrows a suit, goes to church and teaches the community an absolutely meaningless life lesson. “Whether we is rich or poor, we is all homeless” he says in his ridiculous Jar Jar Binks voice, finally completing his transformation into Magical Negro figure. God, I hate this film so much. I want to set it on fire. I want to kick it to splinters in front of its crying children. I want to drown it in a bucket of horse diarrhoea. This is the worst, most offensive thing I have ever seen.
Still, at least the act of patronising Hounsou half to death has brought Kinnear and Zellweger closer together. Now they’re free to take their dreadful white saviour shtick around the world. Look out for Same Kind of Different as Me 2: African Road Trip – They’ve Got Nothing But They’re So Happy, in cinemas never.
Same Kind of Different as Me is released in the US on 3 February 2017
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