Physical Comedy is Everywhere! Exhibit B: Super Bowl Commercials

 [post 455]

I've already shared Super Bowl commercials using physical comedy in this post from 2010 and eight years later in this post. Now, another eight years later, I return to this topic one more time to prove my point that Physical Comedy is Everywhere, only most people don't recognize it as such. In Exhibit A of this 26-part series, we looked at Stephen Colbert's use of mime, dance, and visual humor as part of his late-night comedy. Now we turn to the USA's largest commercial extravaganza, the Super Bowl, the championship of American football, watched by some 125 million people in North America and 200 million worldwide. Unlike the fútbol / futebol / fußball that we Americans call soccer, American football has lots of timeouts and therefore room for a lot of commercials. The cost for a 30-second nationwide spot is around $8–10 million, and double that for a full minute. For the more lavish commercials, the production costs are almost as high. Still, the Super Bowl is the place to be to reach eyeballs, whether you're Toyota or an AI giant or a start-up trying to make a splash. The commercials feature high production values and big-name celebrities in a desperate attempt to stand out. Watching them is very much like watching another competition. Some people even say they don't watch the game, they just watch the commercials. Just google "superbowl commercials" and you'll find countless analytic reviews and top-ten lists.

Obviously if you're spending that kind of money, you want to be as impactful as possible. But how do you do that? In fact, most of them choose humor and, by my rough estimate, about a third of them turn to physical comedy. I wouldn't necessarily say that the results are always exemplary, but they do prove my point. Some examples from yesterday...

• From Wells Fargo Bank, featuring the comedian Marcello Hernández and some circus performers.




• Pringles Potato Chips, starring singer-songwriter-actor Sabrina Carpenter.

• Next up is Alexa, the AI-powered voice assistant from Amazon. Many have commented that this one might have the unintended effect of scaring people away from the product, but then Jeff  Bezos already did that with the movie Melania, so maybe there is hope for humankind.

• A Hyundai commercial with a funny car chase, with John Krasinski from The Office.

• And now a very silly InstaCart commercial sortakinda about ordering the kind of bananas you want, I guess. But funny. Directed by Spike Jonze and starring Ben Stiller and Benson Boone. This is the 30-second version. You can find a 2½-minute version on YouTube.

• This Novartis ad about getting a PSA test for prostate cancer is also very funny, but maybe everyone won't get it? If you don't follow American football, just know that "tight end" here refers to a tight butt and to a position in football. The players in this commercial are all famous tight ends. And if you're not male or not over 50, you may not know that a standard prostate cancer test involves a doctor's finger up the aforementioned butt, pressing hard against the prostate. Yes, it hurts. But if you only do the PSA blood test, you can relax your tight end.

• There are a few more, but I will end with this 2-minute-long (!) telenovela for e.l.f Cosmetics, in which we see Melissa McCarthy getting ready for Bad Bunny's half-time reguetón extravaganza.

And that's my segue into the brilliant and joyous and political half-time show by Bad Bunny and a lot of wonderful collaborators. Yes, I loved it. It combined so many elements, and one of those was physical comedy. Here are two very short moments that you don't usually see in a Super Bowl halftime show:

But if you didn't see the whole thing, you really must check it out on YouTube. (Over 40 million already have in the past 24 hours.) Enjoy!

_____________________________

• For more on the politics of the half-time show, check out this NY Times article, Which Bad Bunny Halftime Show Did You See? and Heather Cox Richardson's Facebook post dated 2-9-26.