Boomer Stars (and Sheep) Shine in Super Bowl Ads

Judy Gerstel | February 7th, 2016

This year’s Super Bowl ads are already generating buzz. Here, some of our top picks.

 


Helen Mirren, 70, in full cleavage-bearing majesty, seated at an elegant restaurant table, tsk-tsks about driving after drinking in a commercial for Budweiser. “Hello, I’m Helen Mirren, a notoriously frank and uncensored British lady.… If you drive drunk, you’ are a short-sighted, utterly useless, oxygen-wasting human form of pollution, a selfish coward. If your brain was donated to science, science would return it. So stop it!…

Click through to see more of this year’s Super Bowl ads.


Willem Dafoe, 60, best known for playing Jesus Christ, plays a cranky Marilyn Monroe in full skirt-blowing glory — and magically becomes the real thing when he eats a Snickers: “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” Eugene Levy, 69, plays a prop guy who looks a lot like Martin Scorsese.


Christopher Walken, 72, lurks menacingly in a man’s walk-in (get it?) closet with a wild sock puppet to urge the guy to go beyond beige with a snazzy new Kia Optima.


Steve Tyler, 67, coaches a portrait of himself, made out of Skittles, singing “Dream On.” “Sing higher,” he keeps insisting until it collapses.


But the hands down favourite of the crop of Superbowl 16 commercials has got to be the flock of singing sheep who give harmonious voice to Queen’s “Somebody To Love” when the new Honda Ridgeline truck with the neat audio system drives out of range.

Don’t expect to see any of these — or others featuring more boomers, including Harvey Keitel, Alec Baldwin and Paul Rudd as well as younger celebs like Drake, Serena Williams, Amy Schumer, Seth Rogen — while watching the Superbowl on Sunday.

This is the last year when Canadian ads will be substituted during the broadcast for the American showcase productions.

But you can watch the American ads online.

If you watch them on the Wall Street Journal site — graphics.wsj.com/superbowlads2016 — you can vote for your favourites in several categories: quality, humour and star power.

When last checked, the sheep were ahead in the votes and Tyler’s Skittles was among the worst.