Many films referenced in this year’s collection
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
There was a lot of comedy gold in these commercials.
Despite the fact that the coronavirus pandemic is still happening, the Super Bowl this year was still exciting in another way and still had an audience mainly consisting of frontline workers in the pandemic hotspot of Florida. While the actual game was not exciting—the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 and the GOAT, Tom Brady, got his 7th Super Bowl win. Scarborough Ontario’s The Weeknd performed an exciting Super Bowl Halftime Show. I had thought that the Super Bowl commercials this year were going to reference the coronavirus pandemic, but instead they made it appear as if nothing had happened at all and is still funny. Here is my analysis of some of the commercials:
Cheetos
The cheesy snack has a new Crunch Pop Mix that is addictive and relevant to the Shaggy song “It Wasn’t Me” which I liked back in the ‘90s. In this Super Bowl commercial, two stars from That ’70s Show, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, reunite as Kunis gets caught eating Cheetos while Kutcher sings lines from “It Wasn’t Me.” This had me laughing a lot, as he sounded exactly like the song! Kunis responds with the same song and gets away with it, and this surprises Shaggy as it is was the first time his idea to simply deny the blame worked. Nostalgia helps sell the product which is the case in this Super Bowl commercial.
Rocket Mortgage
Usually, Budweiser would have the best Super Bowl commercial. Rocket Mortgage’s series of Super Bowl commercials were the top two commercials this year, according to USA Today’s Ad Meter. Getting a mortgage is complex and it is better to be certain when getting one rather than just getting one apparently. Tracy Morgan explains various situations that often backfire, like getting across a bridge, handling bees, and battling Dave Bautista. After watching the commercial again, it was funny as Morgan did his thing. His bit reminded me of a segment in Weekend Update with the Secondhand News on Saturday Night Live.
Paramount+
CBS All Access will be rebranded as Paramount+ on March 4. CBS, who aired the Super Bowl this year, also merged with Viacom again a bit over a year ago. This means that the streaming service will now have content from Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, and Paramount’s catalogue. In this series of Super Bowl commercials, Sir Patrick Stewart narrates a story about many personalities from the channels mentioned earlier going up the Paramount mountain, leading them to Stewart as a metaphor for the streaming service. It ends with the scene in SpongeBob SquarePants where the gang performs in the Super Bowl, and Stewart and Stephen Colbert are delighted by the music. There was a lot of comedy gold in these commercials and the streaming world got more interesting..
GM
GM is beginning to build more electric cars by 2030 and aims to build more than Norway. This fascinates Will Ferrell, and he invites a few of his comedy friends including Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson and Nora Lum (AKA Awkwafina) to go on a journey to be better than Norway—until they surprisingly end up in Sweden. Interestingly, Ferrell was in a show called Welcome to Sweden. The commercial is informative and still has the comedy you would expect from Saturday Night Live.
Oatly
The company that made the original oat milk made a low-budget commercial simply explaining the drink with the company’s CEO (which I thought was Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and it ended up being a Super Bowl commercial. The song is okay—at least it’s better than the local Super Bowl commercials. Oat milk does taste like oats.
