'Taken 2' Rapped For Using Glowing Newspaper Reviews That Were Never Printed

'Taken 2' Rapped..

Twentieth Century Fox has been ordered to pull an ad for the film 'Taken 2' after a watchdog found that glowing reviews used to promote it had never been published in a newspaper.

The ad, heard on the streaming service Spotify, promoted the film with the comments: "Eat your heart out 007, says the Daily Star" and "10 out of 10".

But a listener complained that the comments were not part of the Daily Star's review of the film, which stars Liam Neeson as ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills.

Twentieth Century Fox told the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the Daily Star had given it permission to use the quotes in their marketing material and provided a copy of an email which it said was from the newspaper's reviewer.

The company explained that it often received quotes before the relevant reviews were run but had not been aware that on this occasion the published review had not contained the quote.

However it said that it was satisfied that the quotes in question were a fair and accurate portrayal of the reviewer's opinion of the film.

The ASA noted that the email approving the use of the quotes did not appear to have come from the same person who had written the published review.

It said: "We considered that the average listener would understand from the phrase 'Eat your heart out 007, says the Daily Star, 10 out of 10' that the quote had been made in a published Daily Star review.

"Because we understood that that was not the case, we concluded that the reference in the ad to the Daily Star's review of Taken 2 was misleading."

It ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form.

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