I’m beginning to pick up on something: when a movie looks like a stinker, the studio doesn’t spend a lot of server space promoting it. This ad for Disney’s “Around The World In 80 Days” is so tiny I can barely make it out, and maybe that’s because the parts I can see look incredibly cheesy.

I would like to now just blurt out random thoughts that came to me as I viewed the trailer:

* Jackie Chan as Passepartout? Maybe they’ve renamed Fogg’s assistant so he isn’t French? Actually, I don’t mind that, but the French will surely see this as another francophobic lockout.

* DAMN IT, there isn’t a hot air balloon in “Around the World in 80 Days”! There was in the movie, but not the book, which makes me wonder if this is based on the book or on the original movie. I’m reminded of Roger Ebert’s glossary rule that good movies rarely contain a hot-air balloon.

* I’ve always wanted to see a Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. I can’t believe this is that movie.

* Monty Python member John Cleese is in this movie version of “Around the World in 80 Days”. Monty Python member Eric Idle was in a TV-movie version of “Around the World in 80 Days”. Monty Python member Michael Palin made a series of documented travelogues called “Around the World in 80 Days”. This leaves only Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Graham Chapman to yet appear in an “Around the World in 80 Days” film…and for all we know, Graham’s ashes are in the ashtrays, the fire grate and the vacuum cleaner. (A big No Prize to anyone who gets this joke.)