Blockbuster's Super Bowl Ad Takes a Peek at Tech Envious Rodents

Let me begin by saying I hate Blockbuster with every fiber of my being. I seriously loathe and despise everything that is Blockbuster. Despite my slight bias against them, this commercial made me laugh out loud for real. I actually let out a guffaw, a real belly-aching roar. Ever since the advent of Netflix.com, Blockbuster has been given a run for its money and rightly so. I certainly felt like they deserved to share in the pain that they caused me and others like me.

I should provide a little background for my slanted bent against this movie rental company. A commonly heard story, the gist of my hatred stems from the fact that the evil monster that is Blockbuster bought out my local video store and took out all the good movies (my left eye twitch is starting to come back just talking about it). Havat you, Blockbuster!

But then they go and redeem themselves (think Dumb and Dumber tone of voice here) with this masterpiece of filmmaking! We enter, focused on a a bunny and a gerbil in a pet store while hearing a repetitive squeaky noise. What is that annoying sound? Why yes of course, it is a real live breathing mouse that the rabbit is trying to click! Genius, I tell you, sheer genius! Now that I know what is making the sound, I don't care! It's freaking hilarious!

When the clicking doesn't work, the wise gerbil suggests dragging the mouse. Then he prompts the rabbit to drag the poor mouse faster, all to no avail while the squeaking becomes desperately louder and quicker. And there you have the perfect example of a beautifully executed hook. Now you have me, the viewer, captured and ready to listen to what else you have to say. I never thought I would say this, but well done, Blockbuster, well done.

The ad continues to explain about movies through the mail or through the store. Then the gerbil realizes that the problem with the mouse must be because he didn't plug it in! Finally, the mouse retorts with "Don't even think about it!" This was a well-written and simply elegant piece of humor. The people who worked on this deserve like a gold star or one of those giant cookies with whip cream or something.

Seriously though, I really felt like this was one of the best commercials all night and probably the only positively memorable one. One negative might be that I could not decide whether or not I liked the villianous voice of what seems to be a Baldwin brother as narrator. But I admit, I am really just nitpicking with that. I do try to offer pros and cons to my reviews.

A refreshing point is that this ad was something that could be enjoyed by the whole family (unlike the nasty chocolate nibbling duo). Too often we have booze, sex, and violence being thrown at our kids on tv (hey, I'm all for it, but leave the kids out of it). This commercial proves that you don't need any of that to convincingly win over even the most base and shallow of adults (and I'm pretty shallow).

Will I run out and sign up for Blockbuster's new deal? Probably not. But the next time I drive by my local Blockbuster, instead of giving them the evil eye and cursing them with my dead gypsy grandmother's voodoo hexes, I might just chuckle to myself about naive small and medium-sized rodents knowledge of the internet (and how it uncannily resembles that of my dad's, poor thing). I also predict that pet rabbit, gerbil, and mouse sales go up due to Blockbuster's cute commercial. You never know, they could be trained to write freelance articles while you work at your day job.