It saddens me that a director with Yu's exemplary reputation had to resort to such blatant and repetitive Cinnabon product placement to finance this. The placements are garish. If it had to be done, it could and should have been done with humor, even joking about the product not being real food or maybe having Tsai keep pulling Cinnabons away from the poor weight-challenged kid.
fg
Deal with it.
It's really not that big of a deal. Cinnabon and Panda Express probably funded this entire film, so how can it possibly be "sad" that Yu was able to make a film at the expense of other companies? Sure, the placements are a bit obvious, but for a low budget film I think the 30 seconds worth of Cinnabon screen time is fine since they paid for this entire.....less than mediocre film.
Why are people so "saddened" by product placement? If it weren't for these companies existing and willing to FUND huge portions of a movies budget these films wouldn't even exist. Understand that their exists an economical value in using these advertisements, and I bet if you asked Jessica Yu she would be happy to tell you that Cinnabon gave her the opportunity to make a film.
We are in 2008, almost 2009. You can't make films for ten thousand bucks anymore. Not trying to be attacking you, it's just this film was not a piece of art, by any means, and was a cliche of itself. I'm surprised Cinabon would even fund this thing.
Product placement aside, what's your beef about Cinnabon? You know they smell good and taste good, so why not have the characters feel that way too about it? It is a treat when you go past a food court; granted a ridiculously fattening one, but delicious nonetheless. And Panda Express's appearance during the tourney is believable if a tad overdone.
So no, I had no problem with it being there. They worked the products in as jokes within themselves, so it worked for me.
You want to see BAD product placement, watch "Mac and Me". Skittles and McDonald's ABOUND.
"you know they smell good and taste good" -- more product placement! *facepalm*
shareHonestly I barely even noticed it. Cinnabon is a big mall "thing" so two guys hanging out at the mall mentioning them would be so commonplace to real life as to be overlooked.
*Nyan Cat, LGBT Rainbow of Infinity!