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Vanessa Parise Is the World’s Noblest Filmmaker

Photo: Getty Images


The little one-paragraph synopses that accompany online movie trailers are usually little more than two-sentence loglines, as often unread as diner coleslaw is uneaten, but Apple.com’s Movie Trailers page offers a bit more info on each film than usual. The summary posted with this trailer for August’s Bangkok Dangerous, for example, gives somewhat more plot detail than you’re likely to need to decide if you want to sit through another broody Nicolas Cage thriller. But it’s got nothing on the unintended hilarity provoked by this instant-classic “synopsis” of the forthcoming romantic comedy Jack and Jill vs. the World, a film by Vanessa Parise, the World’s Noblest Filmmaker.

We don’t bestow that title lightly. But the summary on Apple.com somehow makes room to note (between sporadically describing Jack and Jill’s Love Story–knockoff plot) that Parise always makes sure that her films are “life-affirming, multi-dimensional and cognizant of the world’s follies,” and that her lead couple (played by Freddie Prinze Jr. and Taryn Manning) “believe in Fair Trade” and “are animal advocates.”

But shouldn’t a romantic-comedy director have impressive educational credentials, you say? Not to worry! Back to the “synopsis”: “Parise graduated Magna Cum Laude in Biology from Harvard and was accepted into Harvard Medical School (as well as Stanford, Yale and Columbia, to name a few).” Is she brave? You bet – she made “the courageous decision” to give one of her characters cystic fibrosis! But does she work hard enough? Apple’s plot summary goes on at stupefying length to describe Parise’s efforts to finance, write, direct, cast, staff, and sell Jack and Jill vs. the World — efforts which, if we really want to go out on a limb, probably included writing the film’s synopsis for the Apple Movie Trailers site. It’s all in a day’s work for the World’s Noblest Filmmaker. —Mac Rogers

Jack and Jill Vs the World [Apple.com trailers]

Vanessa Parise Is the World’s Noblest Filmmaker