Super Bowl XXXVI Ads: Second Quarter

Visa "Six Degrees"

This is premium stuff. Based on a pop-culture variation on the idea of six degrees of separation that posits you can connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor through a maximum of six movies, Visa sells its ID-checking initiative by having an ID-less Bacon trying to get verification for a check by creating a six-person chain between himself and the cashier. A near-perfect concoction of concept and execution. — Sean Weitner

H&R Block

A stiflingly gray room in which one man is talking in monotone, describing new tax laws. There are 40 or so men at desks apparently attempting to pay attention. A few more shots describing the tedium: A dry highlighter scrapes across a page; water is slowly brought out on a metal cart. We were looking out for this one, since we had advance knowledge of the Coen brothers' direction. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the ad came more together on the second viewing . Also unsurprisingly, the ad was good. — Dan Norton

mlife — "Frogs"

Two children describe how they want mlifes, bicker and mention that their father gave them some frogs as a consolation. So far, the best of the mlife ads; the frogs are enough of a non sequitur to at least make you pay attention. Then they fight. The children. Fight each other. Not the frogs. — Dan Norton

Signs

Will crop circles be to Mel Gibson's conversion to non-action hero what dead people were to Bruce Willis'? All of the other elements are in line — namely, a potentially talented child actor and writer/director M. Night Shyamalan. Having mostly succeeded with his past two films, it's at least encouraging to know that he's been given enough leeway to be able to be coy about his trailers to hint without giving away. Imagine how much different your viewing of The Sixth Sense would have been if you hadn't known that Haley Joel Osment actually saw ghosts... Which is not to say that Signs is going to hit it out of the park, although, since it doesn't come out until August, it's the movie advertised during the game that has the longest latency period. Of course, that can often be a linchpin of suspense. — Sean Weitner

Budweiser — "Clydesdales"

The basic premise here is that horses pulling a Budweiser sleigh trudge all across the country and make it to a field in Central Park or elsewhere in New York City and, with the Statue of Liberty dominating the skyline, the horses kneel, or whatever you call that thing that horses do when they kind of crook one of their front hooves and lower themselves onto their joint.

Trying to string the message here together: The beer is so good it makes horses patriotic? The macrobrewery is so moved by nationalistic sentiment that it's willing to abuse a team of horses by making them pull a massive billboard across the countryside? You could make the case that it's just them trying to take the higher road, but then there's that whole string of more typical ads. True advertising genius would have had the horses attacked by a killer fridge. — Sean Weitner

Hart's War

All of these hyperpatriotic-type movies — Collateral Damage, Hart's War — were in production before Sept. 11, so we can't correlate the movies themselves to post-tragedy sentiment, but we certainly can ask about their release dates and marketing campaigns — but all you can say about that is that the studios are choosing to match the Super Bowl's patriotic timbre with their own.

Hart's War is sort of the last leg of the spate of WWII/Greatest Generation movies — you might call this one Stalag 18. It's hard to know what to make of it from the trailer; the director, Gregory Hoblit, made his name in TV before making such twist-ending fests as Primal Fear, Fallen and Frequency, but I don't think anyone's made a WWII movie in the past few years that hasn't played it absolutely straight. Twist endings? That's something those young whippersnappers would do… — Sean Weitner

E-Trade Halftime Preview

Is it football greasepaint this guy's applying? No, it's cat mascara! For the half-time show! Big guys dressing up like girly girls! A ha ha ha ha ha ha! — Sean Weitner

Lipton Brisk — "Puppet Insurrection"

There's a certain man-behind-the-curtain mentality that…

Oh, those E-Trade ads! Big guys dressing up like girls! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Hee hee… sorry, let me catch my breath. OK. So: There's a certain man-behind-the-curtain mentality that you don't want to bring to advertising — the more meta layers you peel back, the more prickly the audience becomes to manipulation. The corporate lackey says that the new Lipton Brisk recipe is so good it sells itself (did they get rid of the hypersweet lemon flavor needed to offset the bitter brew? Commensurately, then, they would have to get rid of the bitter brew, which means that it must just be water, which means I might potentially drink it); the director then fires all the puppets, ringled by an even-shorter-than-usual Danny DeVito and featuring such other puppeted celebrities as, uh, Frank Gorshin (the "Batman" TV show's Riddler) and a Johnnie Cochran impersonator, all competing in a game of Who's Not Upstaging Who? with a live-action Al Roker and That Guy From E!. As funny as the antics of the aggravated DeVito golem are, it lacks the can't-take-your-eyes-off-it quality of their earlier, black-and-white Claymation ads (for which Gorshin supplied many of the impersonated voices). And it certainly doesn't make you want to drink their terrible tea. — Sean Weitner

Visa — "Official Games"

Visa is the sponsor/official credit card of the Olympics, the Triple Crown and NASCAR. Yes sir, they certainly are one big credit card company. Lots of money to spend on sponsorships. Wouldn't the savvy move for a credit card company ad be to say that they have almost no money? Our rates are so low, and our customers so good, that we can barely stay in business! Our success certainly isn't built upon others' mounting debt! — Sean Weitner

GMC Cadillac

I can't get my head around this ad of a traffic-jammed driver in an old style Caddy who heads down an alley, ends up in the desert alongside a woman in a fresh new Cadillac, sees an ugly Cadillac SUV at a gas station, peers beneath a moving train and sees himself driving another fresh, new Cadillac, and then disappears, ceding his identity to his alter ego in the new car.

QED, Cadillacs apparently cause distortions in the space-time continuum and potential doppelganger implosion. Caveat emptor. — Sean Weitner

"Malcolm in the Middle"

The laundry list of critics offering them kudos is unnecessary; the perfect vignette captured in the remainder of the ad is as good as recommendation as any:

Dewey, the youngest of the household, has found a spider. He calls his dad, who tries to remove the spider by getting him to crawl onto a magazine subscription card. Once in possession of the spider, however, the dad freaks out; they run to the front of the house, and as Dewey opens the door, we see what the father doesn't: Mom, arms full of groceries, on the stoop. Dad throws the spider directly into Mom's face and Dewey slams the door so fast that their double-take is completely natural. This is the kind of thing that "Malcolm" does so well … hopefully it can handle the unnatural pressure of an hour-long, celeb-filled post-game episode. — Sean Weitner

Triple X

While MGM's inability to comprehend parody is scuttling New Line's Austin Powers 3 campaign, Universal shows a much hipper awareness of the self-degrading, self-referential spiral of the secret agent blockbuster with Triple X, which comes courtesy of the director of The Fast and the Furious, an apparently successful attempt to recapture the spirit and energy of exploitation movies. (Haven't seen it, can't say.) Vin Diesel is the leathered, be-tattooed roughneck superspy, and the spot sends up Bond tropes like his relationship with Q and his penchant for cool cars and hair's-breadth escapes, but it does it with mock solemnity. Audiences will respond to the tone of this ad well; if the movie leads up to it, expect success to rival the next Bond sequel, out later this year as well. — Sean Weitner

Budweiser — "Greeting Cards"

What does it say about the New Sincerity that all of the old boy/girl jokes can be so wholeheartedly re-created as this ad, in which a girl spends nearly the whole commercial picking out a Valentine's card while the boy picks up the one in the front of the rack at a convenience store where he's pickin' up a Bud? (And, of course, she loves the sentiment on the card's interior, which it's not clear he's even read — validating the glib slogan "True" that appears at the end of the ad.) Budweiser has always been postmodern in its advertising; are we supposed to have a commensurately postmodern appreciation for their product? "Boy, this sure tastes like slop! Gimme another (wink wink)!" — Sean Weitner

Dockers — "Little Black Dress"

The biggest ad failure so far in the game. Dockers casual pants finally present to men an equivalent to the simple black dress, as bemoaned by a less-aware bunch of guys wearing black dresses — and the Dockers-wearing guy is even dirty dancing with one of the black-dress guys' wives. All of the E-trade ads have similarly traded on transvestitism and the feminine/masculine divide — is it just that it's an easy target with this target demographic? Whatever. As Dave Barry said, Dockers are pants for guys with no butts. — Sean Weitner

mlife — "Grandfather"

Even Japanese people eating sushi want mlife. How has this minute, quasi-universal sampling of the populace found out about mlife to such a degree that they have highly articulated desires for it, when the rest of the world doesn't even know what it is? — Sean Weitner)

Philip Morris — "Talk to Your Kids"

I'm going to step out on a limb here and say that I find all of these j'accuse You'll-be-to-blame-for- your-child's-eventual-death- 'cause-you-didn't-talk-to-them ads fascinating and commendable. Whenever there's some seemingly frivolous or non-actionable class-action lawsuit, people are always talking about why didn't the "victims" know better? or aren't parents to blame for not taking properly teaching their kids? or whatever. If no one else took this to heart, Philip Morris' PSA writers certainly did. Their children must be angels, and are no doubt growing up in a household bereft of secondhand smoke. — Sean Weitner

Monster.com — "Sports"

Does no one see this as a reversal of their famous "middle management" ads of the recent past? To paraphrase: This Olympian is extremely talented, a machine of a man and a paragon of human achievement — and once the Olympics are over, he'll be fundamentally unemployable because these exceptional skills are basically valueless in this economy, so he'll need us to help him get a job — probably middle management.

Sigh. — Sean Weitner

Levi's — "Crazy Legs"

The way that the main character in this ad stands out from the grittily shot background makes it unclear whether he's been composited in, and his John Cleese impression is CGI fake, or if he was actually being photographed doing something amazing, like the Nike Freestyle guy. But the gist is that an inner-city ambassador from the Ministry of Silly Walks is, through the silliness of his walk, expressing just how light and comfy and fly Levi's jeans are. It's funny, but your uncertainty about whether it's real detracts from the potential amazement it could induce. — Sean Weitner

"That '80s Show"

"Where can I find Duran Duran?"

"How about K-Mart?"

Not that funny. Duran Duran seems like an unlikely band to pick on to me, but we won't go there. Also: K-Mart? Nice timing, Brazill. Or was it intentional? Either way, you lose. I had some fondness for the first season of "That '70s Show" (I haven't watched it in a few years), but the new iteration seems fetid.

Although, if it's a hit, I encourage all of you to grab whatever uncopyrighted iterations remain. "That '90s Show"? Viewers should be ready for that in about 24 months. "That 1820s Show?" You never know. Act now! — Sean Weitner