Lions for Lambs and YouTube? Yep, We're Confused.

So let's see. We've got Lions for Lambs, opening in November from MGM. It's a political drama with a complicated story about Army Rangers caught behind enemy lines in Afghanistan, which most Americans can't find on a map. Also, there's some stuff about journalists, apparently, like, old-timey dead-tree journalists, which is what bloggers used to be called when they got paid a lot of money even after they stopped doing any of that hard investigating stuff.

The movie is from director Robert Redford, who was cool most recently when I was a baby and Butch Cassidy was the hot flick. It's from new screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, whose complicated political drama The Kingdom just failed the all-important cool test by flopping (relatively speaking) at the box office. It stars the aforementioned Redford, plus Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. The youngest of whom, Cruise, at 45, is old enough to be, like, the dad of a MySpacer like LonelyGirl.

So what's MGM's grand plan to promote this flick? Let's let Variety tell the story:

In an effort to build buzz for the drama, which bows Nov. 9, the Lion has inked a deal with Google and YouTube to launch a competish for which individuals can produce a 90-second video discussing the social issue they're most passionate about.

Vids will be featured on a specially designed Google "gadget" -- essentially a mini-website within a site -- that will enable visitors to watch and vote on their favorite submissions. A winner will be chosen Nov. 9 and awarded $25,000 to go to a charity of their choice. Acceptance of submissions begins today.

A dedicated YouTube channel will screen the shorts as well, and ads for the pic will be targeted across Google's network to potential auds based on their interests.

Executives at Google and YouTube consider the effort an example of how the companies' network of sites, which attract millions of users, can promote Hollywood productions, and hope it will help entice studios and distribs to devote more of their online marketing budgets to the two Web giants rather than go to rivals like Yahoo.

"Lambs" is the first pic to use multiple elements of Google and YouTube on a large scale, the companies said.

The key to the campaign is giving potential auds "an enlightened sense of engagement," said Adam Stewart, Google's industry director of media and entertainment. "We knew that within YouTube we had a community that would respond to this message."

Oh my god, they're serious, aren't they? They think those "millions of users" will actually be drawn to the prospect of making a video about social awareness? That the MySpace generation has "an enlightened sense of engagement?"

Maybe I'm wrong. I'd like to think the children are our future and all, and of course I know that folks of all ages use and enjoy the capabilities of YouTube. Certainly, CNN's recent presidential debate that solicited questions from regular citizens via the Net was a good use of the service.

But there's a reason why the YouTube hit parade is chock full of Andy Samberg videos. Hell, even Obama Girl is more about a hottie prancing around than it is about anything of actual substance. And MGM will wonder why its online campaign fails to bring anyone into theaters for Lions for Lambs: the under-25s won't care about it, and the over-25s won't know about it. And another studio will claim that the Internet is a mysterious alien planet it simply can't understand.

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