The 10 best Super Bowl 2022 commercials
In this year’s Big Game commercials, Eugene Levy thrills, Zendaya sells, and Pete Davidson takes one for the team
TV Features Super Bowl
From left to right: Eugene Levy, Zendaya, and Lindsay Lohan, appearing in ads for Nissan, SquareSpace, and Planet Fitness, respectively (Screenshots)
Television commercials are an annoyance every day of the year, except for Super Bowl Sunday, when these star-studded ads become an event unto themselves. In the past, you typically had to wait until game day to watch them all, but since we’re in the digital age, most of this year’s offerings were released online well in advance. That gave us time to put together some of our favorites, so we could just sit back and watch the Los Angeles Rams claim victory over the Cincinnati Bengals on February 13.
As usual, there was an onslaught of clever campaigns, but we narrowed down the 10 best Super Bowl commercials of the year.
77 Comments
Peak Super Bowl Commercial for me will always be the Dot Com era with “Money Out the Wazoo” being the best. Best Alexa take goes to South Park for the Covid Special Alexa.
2010 wasn’t the dot-com era, kid. The dot-com era was 1998-2000.
Even E-Trade knew it was all over in 2001
Next year I want to see E-Trade spoof the crypto crash with the same chimpanzee.
dr evil return and the amazon one was the funniest imo. also Lohan looks amazing.
Yeah super happy they nailed the Dr Evil one. All it takes is some good writers, srsly.
I assume the Ad guys setting up a Super Bowl commercial for Planet Fitness wasn’t going to allow her to be a hot mess for the spot.
just saying girls been through it, nice to see her looking so healthy.
No worries, you may be right, and hope she does get back on the right path. I think she was professionally primped for the “health” spot; let’s see what she looks like a month or two back in Dubai.
She’s also an exceptionally good actor – I’m rooting for her.
Every time I see Mean Girls I get a little sad at what she subsequently did to herself.
I think it’s more what the industry did to her, not what she did to herself. survived the best way she was able to.
Fair point. Too many young women entertainers seem to have such trash parents.
Filed under “sports,” eh?
Might as well list top ten STDs
Giz going for the hall of fame clickbait here!
Whoa, they’re putting Flamin Hot on Doritos now? What will those mad geniuses think of next?
Slide #10 has a time code. It starts near the end.
EDIT: Well, fuck me. I mis-read the title and didn’t realize the list was only limited to this year’s Super Bowl specifically. Still, Terry Tate is my all-time #1.
Nah, Herding Cats for me:
Was that LaDainian Tomlinson in the Hellmann’s ad? As the guy he chased down.
Those ScarJo-Jost ads actively make me want to not have an Alexa. Was that the goal?
It seems like a weird choice. If you’re already the type to dislike the thought of having 24-hour surveillance tech in your house then this “funny” self-awareness is more infuriating than entertaining. If you’re the type who hasn’t thought about Alexa being invasive before, then this puts the idea in your head.I did like Johansson’s fake awful acting though.
I get what you are saying but I do find the whole “Alexa is 24 hour surveillance in your home” thing rather funny when people have no issue with Smart Phones, Smart TVs, Smart appliances, Smart Door bells and Smart toilets. At least you know the Alexa is listening all the time.
The first time I remember talking with my wife about something we needed and then getting a banner ad for that very item was REALLY unnerving.
I’ve had that and I have never had Alexa. Maybe it was Siri, but the ad was on a page on my computer.
The first time I saw the commercial, it was the shortened version of her one-eyed “the treasure was in you the whole time”. That alone was the funniest moment in all of the night’s commercials.
I wouldn’t mind having the virtual ScarJo from Her, though.
That voice would grate after a couple decades.
Did anyone else find it disorienting seeing Jost anywhere but behind the WU desk in a suit?
YES.
Just talk in your house with your phone in your pocket and thenyou will see ads about what you were talking about.
It was quite the waste of money. Showing how decent the speaker is, how vast the free music library is (with Prime) and how skillfully Alexa tells dad jokes would have been much more entertaining.
Or a game show style face off where Alexa gives the specific answer every time and Siri says “Here’s what I found on the web” with Cortana never even being able to buzz in.
I don’t like to endorse hitting people but Pete Davidson’s self-awareness about his hitability makes me want to hit him even more.
I mean, I want to hug him, then savagely kick him until he can’t walk.
Wasn’t that a double entendre about always banging celebrities
Davidson is hittable but I mean he doesn’t have Miles Teller levels of face punchability
He’s reached Mickey Rooney levels of scoring poon; good on him.
Kenny G?
In this year’s Big Game commercials, Eugene Levy thrills, Zendaya sells, and Pete Davidson takes one for the teamAs depicted in the top photo that shows Eugene Levy, Zendaya, and… Pete Davidson looks… different.
He looks very short in the ad.
You could easily have told me that was Dan Levy in a wig and I’d have believed you. As he gets older, the differences separating Dan from his dad get smaller and smaller.
People make fun of Kenny G but the dude is a fucking woodwind beast
Then why is he wasting time with the saxophone? Anybody who knows woodwinds knows the king of the woodwinds is the oboe.
I’m pretty sure he rocks an oboe along with sax and clarinet
Isn’t the oboe the ill woodwind that nobody blows good?
Still boring though.
The Eugene Levy Thrill Rider roof jump reminds me of Grand Theft Auto.
The Honda crab commercial from about 15 years ago is still my favorite, but I acknowledge the crab’s speech is a little dodgy and not something they could do now.
My favorite has to be the Mini Cooper commercial that takes place on the set of a game show called Cram It in the Boot, and is an extended riff on anal. I always wondered if whoever signed off on that understood what he was seeing.I can’t get the full-length 60 second spot to post – it’s worth looking up. He’s the short verion.
Elrond looks like Barney Stinson in a disguise to rape someone.
These ads all seem to be reaching for Theatre of the Absurd styling. The results aren’t always very humorous.
as if any of this crap has anything remotely to do with Ionesco or Genet
I thought that Larry David crypto ad was pretty funny. His ancestor being pro-Monarchy during the Revolutionary War is so on brand.But my biggest laugh was from the Austin Powers reunion with this exchange:“Dad, you can’t keep pushing my buttons!”(Cut to Dr. Evil about to push a button to send his son to his death)
Zendaya, as always, looked simply stunning. BTW – The commercial was directed by some guy named Edgar Wright. Is that worth mentioning?
Squarespace always gets a big film director – their Dolly Parton ad last year was by Damien Chazelle, and their weird Idris Elba Que Sera Sera ad a few years back was directed by Spike Jonze
I guess it’s time once again to trot out the greatest Superbowl ad of all time, a five second spot shown only in the Baltimore/Washington metro area. Behold:
Lindsay Lohan looks pretty good for being 67 years old.
I thought the canned cocktails lazy people was great, and didn’t need star power to carry it. The Larry David ad was pretty good.
The “Baby-Me” joke was just a sad reminder that poor Verne Troyer drank himself to death because of his struggles with depression. Not what I think GM was aiming for.
No Cable Guy?
Nostalgia got me last night. I really liked the Sopranos reunion commercial. It felt like a very tastefully done selling-out. But it felt good seeing it. I also went “Hell, yeah!” when seeing the E*trade baby’s return. And who can not smile when the greatest bromance in history sings about…smart homes, internet, something? It was just missing an EAGLE!
I thought Uber Eats was good too.
Did anyone notice that the object Gwenyth Paltrow ate in Uber Eats was a candle?
DID YOU NOTICE WHAT SCENT??
I told you all very specifically. If you say Lindsay Lohan’s name too many times out loud she’ll come back and you’ll regret it.Now someone bring me that ad guy’s head.
I appreciated the late-90s-accurate mutton chops on Seth Rogen in the roadtrip flashback…
Abother ‘meh’ year, as usual, but Seth Green did make me chuckle in the Dr Evil one. For 90s throwbacks, Austin Powers fares better than Jim Carrey’s The Cable Guy. The Seth Rogan/Paul Rudd one was cute too. Anything with talking/singing animals can burn in the sun, so I hated which ever one that was with the bear. Also not sure what was going on with the bouncing code that had be scanned, but I’m never in the mood for that kind of “dead air”. So my favorites were Arnold as Zeus loving an electric car, and Anna Kendrick using barbie dollhouses to talk about mortgages.
No mention of the Sopranos/Chevrolet ad? That was brilliant. Plus Meadow has learned to park!
I will say solely for making you stop what you’re doing and watch, the Sopranos Chevy ad was the one commercial that did so more than any others.As in, the second I heard Alabama 3, it had my complete and utter attention during the one minute drive, at least in between wondering how the hell they got the rights for it. They apparently paid through the nose and Chase – who directed it yet somehow kept all of it out of the news – was, as you’d expect, insane about making the sequence details match (the lollipop was a nice touch along with the EzPass, and Alan Sepinwall caught Satriale’s now having a ‘no antibiotics’ sign.)The only problem was that it worked wonderfully as a nice little coda to the series if it’s canon – AJ and Meadow surviving and for some reason going back to Tony’s baaad choice of restaurants – but the product they’re pitching is almost irrelevant to almost anyone watching. I found out from the Sepinwall review that there’s some actual canon basis for the hug besides what I thought was just a 4th wall break of two actors seeing each other again; there’s a brief scene Meadow gets annoyed with AJ for pitching her on a Prius at some point in the show, so getting her in an EV is not terrible context. How many people would have any clue about this probably approaches zero, though, and even writing this up I almost forgot she was driving a Silverado.But hey, if you wanna drop $20 million for a minute of content (on top of everything else the ad agency paid a slug of the original cast to tout it on social media, so I can’t imagine it was all that much less than that) to make a fan service sequel for free, I’m all for it!
My immediate reaction was “either they’re restarting the franchise with the kids OOOORRRR…. it’s another fucking truck commercial.”
I personally thought the Disney+ goat commercial was amazing and was best of the night.
And Lindsay Lohan is still just gorgeous.
Good idea to save the Doritos ad for last, it was the only one worth watching.