The Super Bowl Festival Du Film--Well, Ads Anyway

As a lifelong Giants fan, I found it hard to pay proper attention to the commercials that aired during the Super Bowl. When that pre-coital Victoria's Secret spot came on at the end of the game, one was already--with due respect to Brazilian model Adriana Lima (we saw her in Wong Kar -Wai's BMW short, The Follow) and Brenda Lee's 1961 version of "I'm In the Mood For Love", in some gridiron version of post-coital. (Or was it the Jack Daniels and meat products?)

That said, if the game was in doubt until the last time Tom Brady said "murnfff" and heaved a Hail Mary towards the end zone, the ad spot competition was pretty much a runaway from the time the first of two e*trade spots aired. The 30-second ad, dubbed "Baby Trading 1" (see it here n the Ad Age site), with an adenoidal, too-cool-for-school adult voice issuing out of a cute little baby who finally emits something milky and a slightly surprised "whoa", quickly became the promo of choice--Tivo, tracking such things with a slightly diabolical new tool that (anonymously) monitors consumers' replays, a warded it the replay crown. Even that pocket masterpiece was bettered by Baby Trading 2, in which our new favorite infant, 45, points out the balloon-bending clown he's rented with the "extra coin", noting, "I really underestimated the creepiness."

Both spots were made for e*trade, under their new advertising contract with Grey Worldwide (they split with BBDO in November in a much publicized move) and directed by Randy Krallman, a self-described former "burnout snowboarder" now in his mid-thirties, who appears ot be sick in both the best and a more ordinary sense of the word. (His promos for HBO, using washed-up, D-list hambone actors running lines we've just seen the real Entourage cast do, are quietly upsetting.)

It was at the end of November that e*trade went foraging for a capital-rich rescuer after the mortgage meltdown and other factors left it faltering, and found $17 billion hedge fun The Citadel Investment Group, which injected $1.75 billion to bail it out. The two Super Bowl spots were a calculated, $4 million gamble to supercharge its image and its stock price. That tightrope walk couldn't help but remind some observers of their witty 2001 Super Bowl spot, in which a chimp led two seemingly developmentally challenged hayseeds in a sad musical interlude that gave way to the on screen graphic, "Well, we just wasted two million bucks. What are you doing with your money?"

The coming days should show if e*trade can manage some sort of rebound.

Other ads that Tivo users wanted more of included runner-up Pepsi, with Justin Timberlake flopping dangerously over and through a row of obstacles (thanks to people sucking on the product--don't ask) and also at least two terrible ads, the resoundingly unfunny James Carville and Bill Frist spot for Coke, an the Bridgestone ad using Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons as ghoulish, potential road kill. At a cost as high as $2.7 million for 30 seconds of air time, there are no minor mistakes. The game was the most-watched ever, with Nielsen counting 97.5 million viewers.

Reviewers found more to like in the mouthing-off, brown shirt stain of "Tide To Go", the monster carrier pigeons of FedEx's clever spot, and the Godfather reprise where an auto grill rather than a horse head ends up in Moe Green's bed ("Old luxury just got put on notice".) The latter was directed by commercials ace Noam Murro who was covered in the space for his nicely made Smart People, which debuted at Sundance.

Some of the spots were more cinematic than the cinema that got advertised, with a second Iron Man trailer nowhere near as enticing as the earlier one that's been available online, a cute but hardly irresistible spot for Disney's Wall-E (which opens June 27 opposite Wanted, for which we saw a spot where James McAvoy apprentices, with some Matrix-style visual choreography, for trained killer Angelina Jolie.

Despite some high spots, it was far from the best year for Super Bowl ads, as crassness reigned either humorously (a in Will Ferrel's beer spot that also served as a stealth ad for his upcoming Semi-Pro) or tastelessly (see Ad Age's Bob Garfield sack those ads here). All in all, the promo parade, unlike the riveting game, whose key play was a have from Eli Maning to little-used receivr David Tyree, could be summed up by borrowing a phrase from the obviously seething, still in a state of denial Patriots coach Bill Bellicheck: "We're disappointed".

(David Tyree hauls in a desperation pass from Eli Manning to keep the Giants' late drive alie; photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)