MovieChat Forums > The Mexican (2001) Discussion > Almost gave up on movies when he showed ...

Almost gave up on movies when he showed up with the bag of DORITOS!

posted 18 years ago by Edward-217
3 replies | jump to latest

I've never seen such blatant product placement. Balaban comes around the corner, in a pivotal scene near the end, and he's got a giant bag of DORITOS in his hand, practically shoved in the camera. This served absolutely no purpose to the story or anything. There is no reason he would be eating Doritos at this time. Can you imagine Humphrey Bogart going down the river with Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen" and pulling out a bag of Doritos?

Disgusting.

Julia Roberts is always talking about how "art" cannot be compromised, blah, blah, blah... And then they do this with the doritos.

[–] CBikle 18 years ago

...this movie had bigger problems than this.

Honestly, I would've preferred more product-placement in lieu of some of those painful scenes where the actors seemed to ad-lib their dialogue.

[–] xdayx 16 years ago

You jackass... The Doritos weren't there for the sole purpose of product placement. It is to help show how much of a douche bag Balaban is. Mainly to create a separation between him and Pitt's character as the audience is supposed to like Pitt and dislike Balaban. Pitt is more fun and wants to "get into the spirit" and rents the El Camino... Balaban's version of getting into the spirit while in Mexico is eating some Doritos ("Mexican food" to him)... and also notice that when they go outside, Balaban is driving the Chrysler that the rental agency guy kept trying to rent to Pitt and his buddy rather than a cool muscle car. It's not a huge form of symbolism, but it is there and it is just meant to say "Pitt is cool and he is the good guy and Balaban is lame and is the bad guy."

[–] Motown82 16 years ago

What really bugged me about this scene was that I felt it ripped off the idea of casually eating crunchy food while talking on the phone from Fight Club. When Tyler was answering "his" phone from Jack. Fight Club came out before this movie, and I was and still am a big fan of it. So I didn't like how they used such a cool idea so soon after such a cool movie just came out. Well two years, but you get the point. Other than that, I didn't mind the movie all that much. I saw it with a bunch of friends and we just thought it was too long is all. But I HATE Julia Roberts.