Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

And the first nominee for the 2013 Beerbohm Award for Worst Spoiler Trailer is.... this one.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen has all the elements of a quirky, fun, heart-felt and heart-warming story.  It has an exotic destination.  Personal conflict. A government trying to exploit something good to cover up something bad, only to discover the good is really good. There's an Arab Sheik who doesn't embody the movie stereotype - he's a decent person who cares about his people (you know, like most of us).  There's an example of different people from different cultures rallying together for a good cause. There's humour and even a love story.  And, there's Ewan McGregor.

Is this guy one of the most underrated actors of our time?  He has made some decent films and has made some mediocre films better just because of his acting ability.  And, c'mon, was he not priceless in Big Fish?

For the first minute or so of this trailer I'm thinking, wow, this is a sort of original idea in the spirit of The Milagro Beanfield War.  And then, BAM!  The trailer gives away everything in the next minute.  This trailer could even surpass The Help as all-time (7 months of Beerbohmtastic) worst spoiler trailer ever.

So here's what the trailer tells us:  Pretty lady approaches stuffy fisheries beaurocrat (Ewan) to discuss shipping salmon to Yemen because a Sheik feels that sport fishing would be a good thing for his people.  Stuffy beaurocrat thinks it's a dumb idea.  This in itself is a funny and quirky concept with a sincere purpose.  Meanwhile back at British intellegence there's a major screw up by the military in the middle east and intellegence needs a "feel good" story to latch onto in order to create a diversion.  Typical public relations crap, but believable.   So the government catches wind of the salmon story and forces stuffy beaurocrat (and pretty lady) to make it happen. 

Stuffy Ewan meets Sheik and is moved by the goodwill of providing "hope" for his people.  Ewan and pretty lady team up to make it happen.  They fall in love (they are actually shown holding hands in the trailer).  The salmon are delivered (we also see this in the trailer).  And everybody is happy and appears to get what they want.

The only mystery will be what obstacles they have to overcome because we already know that they were successful - at least that's what the trailer implies.

When I reviewed the trailer for The Help I said,

"So the meat of this film was handed as a two-minute appetizer, while the two-hour filler will be presented, following the cost of admission, as the main course.   That's like paying $50 for bruschetta and $7 for lobster."

Only this time it's $7 for salmon.

This is likely a date night movie, but not my choice.