Film Flam

Movie stars aren't the only ones who get Hollywood makeovers. Newspaper ads for movies are frequently face-lifted too. Some recent examples:

After the big-budget-effects Memoirs of an Invisible Man drew an invisible audience, Warner Bros. seemed to place the blame on costar Daryl Hannah, who did a disappearing act from the ads that had featured her and Chevy Chase. The comedy nonetheless soon vanished from theaters.

The effects-laden Lawnmower Man opened to better business, but the buzz focused on the Stephen King film's ''virtual reality'' gimmick. The ad's drab suburban image was quickly replaced by Terminator 2-style hardware graphics.

My Cousin Vinny's original campaign featured a photo of Joe Pesci in a courtroom; a subsequent cheesecake shot highlighting scene-stealer Marisa Tomei evoked Pretty Woman far more than Twelve Angry Men. ''It seems like [Vinny's] got a lot of legs,'' says Andrea Jaffe, Twentieth Century Fox's domestic marketing president. ''We weren't trying to copy Pretty Woman.'' She readily admits, though, that the latest Vinny ad parody of the poster art for another Fox hit, White Men Can't Jump, is deliberate: ''We thought it would be fun. People get bored pretty easily.''