Exploring product placement in movies and on television, the documentary is as much celebration as it is a critique of what is called co-promotion, in which movies like “Spider-Man 2” are infiltrated with images of brand-name products that pay for the exposure. The full title gives POM Wonderful its own line because the makers of the pricey pomegranate elixir paid $1 million for above-the-title naming rights. Most of the movie's substance consists of Mr. Spurlock's campaign to find backers—he's an engaging pitchman—but he also discusses matters of ethics (while slugging down bottles of POM Wonderful) with such deep thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Donald Trump, and with Ralph Nader, who warns that "you can satirize and spoof yourself out of your objective." While it's hard to recall what the film scene was like before Janus, it's easy to remember the thrill of discovering the company's releases.
– Morgan Spurlock, the guy behind Super Size Me, calls his latest documentary—an exploration of our ad-obsessed culture—The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. And critics seem to agree: Spurlock “has this habit of making documentaries that come hidden in the Trojan horse of silly and then stab at your conscience,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “As ever, he makes you laugh till it hurts.” Spurlock "spoofs himself into an exuberant documentary that demonstrates the all-pervasive influence of modern advertising by satiric example, and with great ingenuity,” notes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. Spurlock has an appeal all his own, adds Stephen Holden in the New York Times: It’s “the gift of gab along with an undeniable star quality," making him "a superb promoter of himself as a brand." But “something gets lost as the distance between filmmaker and subject disappears—I think we call it objectivity,” warns Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. Still, Spurlock offers “some surprisingly salient observations.”