And This Little Pigskin Went to Market

By Steven Zeitchik

We've always thought of movie spots as the placekick-holders of Superbowl commercials -- if they do their job well, you barely notice them (really, who's buzzing about movie ads in the office kitchen as required viewing on Monday?); if they screw up, everyone's scratching their heads. Who is that guy? Who let him on the team?

For all the talk about Hollywood's return to the Super Bowl circus - studios spent somewhere between $10-20 million promoting winter and spring releases - Sunday's movie commercials did little to disprove the theory. Sure, May wide release "Iron Man" generated enough fireworks that viewers will be kept interested for a few weeks (if not for three months) and Uni's spot for "Wanted" had enough intrigue and Angelina Jolie to temporarily halt the beer run.

But generally they were a lackluster bunch, generic teasers for upcoming tentpoles in-between the soft-drink and Go Daddy spots we were really there to see. (See THR's Ray Richmond for his dead-on assessment; we couldn't agree more that the E-Trade baby was the wittiest creation and the Thanksgiving Day-parade Coke spot the most inspired.)

Spots for Will Ferrell's "Semipro" were overly familiar. Pixar's "Wall-E" went meta as we watched Buzz Lightyear watching the spot, but it didn't conceal its ordinariness. A commercial for Doug Liman's "Jumper" passed so quickly we thought we had ourselves been teleported.

You can view the commercials again at this little bit of awkward News Corp. synergy (remember when SB spots were all about that upstart site Adcritic.com?), or for the first time if you opted out Sunday evening and went to the ballet instead.

Of course what do we know? We're Jets fan here at RB, so a "Howard the Duck" trailer would have been preferable viewing to pretty much anything else shown Sunday night. Grrr. And quack.

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