“Friends make a pact” is a premise you can turn in any number of directions, either as a drama or as a comedy. Taking the latter approach is this week’s small-scale release Little Bitches. In the movie Jennette McCurdy, Kiersey Clemons and Virginia Gardner play Annie, Marisa and Kelly, a group of high school friends who have vowed to end their high school careers by attending the biggest party of the year and all opening their college acceptance letters when they do so.
Of course because this is a story about high schoolers and rites of passage there’s lots of drama and angst to go along with the hijinks as friendships are begun and ended and everyone tries to go out on a memorable note. Add to that the presence of two cops determined to break up the party and deny the kids their fun and…yeah, there you are.
The Posters
There’s not much going on with the poster. Instead of trying to explain anything about the story it just presents a generic image of the three friends walking toward the camera as a group, something we’ve seen a number of times before. There’s no copy here other than the cringingly-awful “The OMGWTF comedy.” No. Just…no.
The Trailers
The red-band trailer that was released was a little better. It opens with Marisa and Annie engaging in a little petty theft to show that they’re ready to break the rules and live on the wild side a bit. After that we learn Annie used to be friends with another group that’s now super-popular and super-mean about it. As they all plan to attend the big party that night various plans are made and upset, all as two local cops – one in particular – plan to blatantly abuse their authority by breaking things up.
It’s not bad and certainly sells a sense of humor. Maybe it’s the presence of the two police officers, but it comes off a little like a female twist on Superbad, though without the horndog element of a bunch of dudes trying to score. Instead it’s just about ending a chapter of life on your own terms and all the ways that can go wrong.
Online and Social
Not much here, just a single Twitter profile that’s barely been updated by anything other than RTs of people sharing the trailer.
Advertising and Cross-Promotions
Nothing here either.
Media and Publicity
Aside from a few beats around the release of marketing assets and clips this is similarly barren.
Overall
The poster is a loss, but the trailer kind of works. Sure, we’ve seen this kind of movie before, but it’s made to seem like there’s at least a mildly interesting take on the material. As I said before, it’s Superbad but gender-switched and without the relentless obsession with sex.
The biggest problem with the campaign then is that there isn’t more of it. It would have been nice to see Sony put some level of effort toward promoting it, even just with earned media. As it is this will probably pass by mostly unseen, partly because of a lackluster marketing push that didn’t seem interested in selling it to anyone.
Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.
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