Top 5 Super Bowl Commercials

         by Kyle Kessell

The Super Bowl is filled with all kinds of excitement from the miraculous plays made on the field to the ever-memorable halftime shows, and while you may be waiting to see one of those two things happen, we are granted with the best commercials of the year. These commercials break up the intensity of the game for some much-needed comic relief, emotional release or to inform you of that new movie that had too much money spent on it and will inevitably disappoint, but the trailer is solid. It gives everyone an opportunity to enjoy the evening and for the casual, or not so casual fan, it disrupts the monotony that football presents and gives us all the opportunity to be a critic for a night.

We all have our opinions on which commercial was the best and which one was wasted money. Well, I am no different from everyone else and I picked out my top five favorite commercials of the evening. I’ll let you know that the commercials pulling at the heartstrings are not in my top five, neither are action sequences or anything sending out a political vibe.

Not every commercial I liked made my top five and of course I’m going to have some honorable mentions. This is not saying that these commercials aren’t worth watching again, and we all know we’re going to see them over and over for the next year, but they weren’t able to crack the top five. Starting out the honorable mentions are Christopher Walken and Justin Timberlake starring in the short for Bai. Next, John Malkovich talking on a cell phone to acquire a domain name on Squarespace. Last, Kristen Schaal starring in a couple of commercials for T-Mobile aimed toward a mature audience. Now, lets get into the top five.

To start out, the number five spot goes to Kia promoting their eco- hybrid Niro, and starring in this is the funny woman, Melissa McCarthy. In a very slapstick style of comedy, McCarthy is constantly driving in her Niro where she gets called into action to save whales, trees and ice caps. Everything seems to go wrong for the eco warrior as she is struck by the tail of a whale and plastered on the broad side of a naval ship, a top of a tree that gets chopped down and falls off of a cliff and drops into the icy water as the ice berg she claimed splits in-between her feet. McCarthy is hilarious in this, as she is in almost everything, and you can never go wrong with slapstick, just look at the Three Stooges.

 Next at four, we have Humpty Dumpty sitting in the hospital after falling off the wall. He’s all stitched up talking to a Turbo Tax employee about deductions on medical expenses. Humpty has an English accent, which is always a plus for me because foreign accents will peak my interest every time, and he is in a very comical argument with all the kings men.

Coming in at the third spot is the Buick commercial. I want to see more of it and not just because I’m a huge Cam Newton fan. I’m also a fan of seeing kids getting stiff-armed, which is what we get in this fictitious peewee game. One of the kids stands open in the end zone yelling “I’m open,” and you can see the horror on his face when he sees that Cam notices him open and proceeds to rocket arm the ball to the kid sending him fifteen yards back. It ends with one of the coaches turning into supermodel Miranda Kerr and catches the eye of one of the referees who then runs into a table on the sideline while saying her name.

The number two spot goes to the live Snickers commercial starring Adam Driver in which they mentioned the halftime score of the Super Bowl and everything proceeds to go wrong. It is shot with an old western theme when the bad guys’ blood packs explode too soon and, Adam bumps into the set and causes it all to come tumbling down. The commercial itself wasn’t worthy of such a high spot on this list, but when you think about it, being shot live makes it that much more impressive. Shout out to everyone involved.

Lastly, the number one spot goes to the commercial for Avocados. It has everything I like: conspiracies, guacamole, a leader loses control of his subordinates and Jon Lovitz providing not so subtle subliminal messaging. I’d watch this commercial again and again, and when it comes to choosing these commercials for this list, that’s what it comes down to. That’s why this one gets the number one spot.