Well, only the beginning. But for those of you who were enamored of Carly Rae Jepsen’s fantastic last album, E•MO•TION, and thus endured the less enamoring video for “I Really Like You,” the site of Tom Hanks in business attire walking down a road in the center of the screen singing (or lip-syncing) a famous musician’s words as a bunch of other people try to catch up to him might bring back bad memories.
And so, oddly, begins the trailer for A Hologram for the King, the Tom Hanks-starring film based on Dave Eggers’ book about an American salesman pitching the IT component — particularly a “holographic teleconferencing system” à la Star Wars — of a major development plan in a Saudi Arabian city. (The New York Times review of the book referred to it as “Death of a Globalized Salesman.”)
In the trailer, Tom Hanks sings The Talking Heads’ “Once In a Lifetime” as he leaves his big suburban home, which goes up in purple smoke, as wife follows after, and then likewise poofs into purple smoke. (This all seems to signify the crumbling of his life as he it knows at home, which of course facilitates and necessitates his journey abroad, as well as the relationship he develops with a Saudi doctor while there.)
And honestly, the Jepsen-esque sequence is far better than when Hanks actually arrives in Saudi Arabia and a voiceover intones things like, “Sometimes you have to change your scenery in order to change your life.” But perhaps that’s just schmaltz added for the trailer, and hopefully doesn’t indicate the actual tone of the film.
A Hologram for the King will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival, and will be released in theaters on April 22. It was adapted for the screen and directed by Tom Tykwer, who’s done some awesome work (Run Lola Run) and some less awesome work (Cloud Atlas).
Watch the trailer:
Oh, and because why not, here’s “I Really Like You”: