Twelve Movie Trailer: Joel Schumacher Is Back With...Something

It's a great day for bad trailers. We had the Step Up 3-D trailer earlier today, and now here's a clip showing off Joel Schumacher's Twelve, a film that didn't actually set audiences on fire at Sundance. (Here's Peter's review.) And yet it did get a quick distro deal, from movie newbie Hanover House. Now there's a trailer that is long, rambling, and possibly NSFW (thanks to a little sex reference).

Last year wasn't great for Schumacher, what with having his film Blood Creek dumped into dollar theaters by LionsGate. You'd think this year should be better, but with this trailer for Twelve (which comes via The Playlist) I wonder.

So, what we have here is the majesty of a rambling Kiefer Sutherland voice over framing a tale of drug dealing and over-privileged New York City kids. Initially it seems to make sense, and then as the trailer goes on...and on...it just rambles. And then there's Curtis Jackson. I liked him a lot more as 50 Cent, I think. He still doesn't look like an actor.

There are a couple of good images in the trailer, but they're offset by the fact that there's no coherence to any of them. Not difficult to figure that the movie is a lot like that, too.

And is this the first trailer to actually jump the line and use MGMT's song 'Kids'? (Which seems to be to be so recognizable at this point that using it in a trailer is just distracting. But perhaps that's exactly the point.)

Here's the synopsis of Twelve, just to get you started. Notice that the murder plot spelled out below is barely hinted at in this 3-minute clip:

Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Nick McDonell, written when he was only 17 years old, Twelve is a chilling chronicle of privileged urban adolescence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Set over spring break, the story follows White Mike, a kid with unlimited potential, who has dropped out of his senior year of high school and sells marijuana to his rich, spoiled peers. When his cousin is brutally murdered in an east Harlem project, and his best friend is arrested for the crime, White Mike is hurled on a collision course with his own destiny.

Led by director Joel Schumacher, a talented ensemble cast perfectly captures the obvious pain of children teetering on the brink of adulthood. Schumacher counters their overindulged behavior with operatic staging and a literary voice-over. For every decade, there are moments when youth culture is frozen in "art," to be reveled in by the generation that lived it and observed by those that didn't. That is Twelve.