Booking.com will get you to hell for less

At booking.com, we can't promise that your kids won't be bored out of their minds twenty minutes into that vacation to the middle of nowhere to pan for pretty dirt in a creek unless that big not-cabin you rented has excellent WiFi, but we can guarantee the best possible rate for that vacation your wife and kids will be complaining about for years to come and which ended any chance that your vacation suggestions would ever be taken seriously again by your family.

I may be being a bit generous with the "twenty minutes" estimate.  That looks like a pretty nice cabin.  I think it's more likely that inside of fifteen minutes the children in this ad are long past any interest in dipping a screen into a creek and are sitting in that cabin checking out the satellite package and texting nasty comments about Stupid Dad and his Stupid Idea of Fun to their friends who are at a cool beach or amusement park someplace.  Maybe the cabin has a hot tub?  Something?  Anything that doesn't lead everyone to angrily demand an explanation for why the family's two freaking weeks of vacation per year is being spent a few miles down the road from Jackson Hole Bible College and a thousand miles from Planet Interesting?

Three points concerning this Danny DeVito Quickbooks Commercial

1.  It's perfectly normal to Josie Gonzalez (who is really cute, btw) to be handed financial advice from Danny DeVito because....well, because this is television, I guess.

2.  It's perfectly fine to portray a dog groomer living in a freaking palace in the suburbs.  Because dog groomers running their own small, one-employee businesses regularly make $250K annually.  Uh-huh.

3.  Josie Gonzalez doesn't have a single line in this entire ad.  Why not?  I strongly suspect that it's because Danny DeVito, for all his concern for the success of this small business, had zero interest in sharing lines with a non-actor.  So Josie Gonzalez is oddly mute during her scenes, which comes off as more than a little awkward and weird.

Does P3 stand for Three Times the Pollution?

So instead of spending thirty seconds chopping up a cup of cold turkey and cheese and adding a handful of nuts, this woman is going to buy the same thing in "convenient" packaging which will be sitting in a landfill leaching toxins for the next ten thousand years.  And she'll feel superior doing it.

Only the country which created Lunchables and put Sunny Delight in 4-ounce plastic bottles and taught us all how to drink coffee brewed in individual plastic cups could pull this off AND sell it as a virtue.

Nobody has to pay me to avoid eating Dominos Pizza, but thanks anyway

Oh look, it's another one of those commercials which feature a very straightforward offer that must be questioned by half a dozen people who are too rock-brained to get it the first five times.  Aren't those always so hilarious?

I almost want the Dominos Pizza Spokeschoad to respond to "what about anchovies?" with "well, no, that's the exception to our Any Pizza offer.  No anchovies.  Glad you asked.  We forgot about that one."  I also wish he had responded to the dog with the chew toy with either "no, the offer is for humans only" or "I'd stick with that rubber pizza, I can almost guarantee it tastes better than anything Dominos makes."

In the end, it's all about bribing us to put down that GOOD pizza we've been eating and buy a BAD pizza from Dominos on the theory that Cheap is Better than Good.

And I'm not going to even point out that the only black woman in the entire commercial has no other lines other than "WHAAAAAAAA???"  Haha, sassy black women are so funny, aren't they?  Another winner, Dominos!  I guess after Papa John, you pretty much have carte blanche to do anything now, don't you?

Chrysler Pacifica: As shallow as it gets, I hope

Finally having some Quality Time with her thoughts, weird twitchy airhead proceeds to waste that time thinking vacant non-thoughts no human being with two brain cells to rub together thinks.  And, as implied previously, must summon a significant amount of facial muscle energy to accomplish even that.

(I mean, seriously- I can almost hear the director yelling "show me Confusion!  Show me Contemplation!  Now give me a quizzical look!"  No Oscar nominations in this woman's future, that's for sure.*)

This woman is recognized* by a trophy wife driving the same vehicle who assumes that the first woman- when she isn't struggling to contort her face to let us know she's "thinking" things- is green and all that, whatever.  And the punchline is that the first woman is just taking the opportunity to jam a giant sandwich into her mouth at the light.  This is funny Because Reasons.

Not too much more to say about this ad, except to note that it's the first car commercial I've seen in ages which actually mentions certain attributes of the automobile beyond it's WiFi capablities.  We don't even see anyone yakking on their phones in this ad, which is at least one small step forward.  It's still a gigantic Salute to Stupid, but at least it doesn't promote behavior that puts me in danger every time I cross the street.  I do wish that it didn't suggest that driving a two-ton piece of metal that keeps the DRIVER safe is a good time to list the most banal thoughts that have ever popped into the head of any biped ever, but I know that suggesting it's time better spent paying attention to one's surroundings is a bridge too far for most people, so I'll take what I can get.

*I see that this is another You're Supposed To Know Who This Is commercial featuring a Well-Known To People Addicted to Some Mind-Numbingly Dumb Show actress.  Proud to say that I don't know who she is, nor do I care.

Disgusting Scraping the Barrel Febreze Commercial reminds us that we are held in infinite contempt by advertisers

You can't smell Dave's farts.  That's it.  They don't smell, for some reason.  They never did.  And everyone noticed that they don't smell and everyone celebrates that fact, from Dave's parents to the would-be trophy wife who wasn't good enough for the guy whose farts didn't stink.  Even the janitor mopping the locker room has fond memories for Dave, and I don't even want to think about why he's remembering Dave's odorless fecal release as he's mopping the locker room floor. 

Sigh.  Yeah, we get it.  We got it ten seconds in, yet you gave us another minute and a half of this nonsense.

Because, you see, the people who are coming to your Party to Watch the Patriots Win Again aren't Dave.  They are going to stink up your bathroom.  So you'd better get Febreze.

Meanwhile, Dave doesn't even know what Febreze is- and since he can't read and continues to live with his mother well into his twenties, he asks her what it is.  His mother would know, being a girl and all.  WTF-ever, Febreze.  I can't help thinking that this commercial was made exclusively for the glue-sniffers at YouTube to LOL THIS IS HILARIOUS I LOVE THIS BTW WHAT IS THAT SONG crowd, but even they didn't jump at bait THIS obnoxiously obvious.  That's something, anyway.

Point of Personal Privilege: "Creed II" is a really, really bad movie (Spoilers!)

I finally got around to watching this film the other day.  I didn't have much by way of expectations; after all, I saw the first one and thought it was a predictably blah flick.  But at least it didn't make me angry.  This one made me angry.  More about that later.

First, let's talk about Michael B Jordan.  Is this guy a sought-after actor nowadays, and if so, may I ask why?  He has all the emotional range of Derek Zoolander.  He's like a male Alicia Vikander.  He's got exactly one look- sullen, surly, angry, morose, whatever you want to call it, there it is, on his face, at all times.  He's not at all interesting- in fact, I'd call his "characterizations" (to be charitable) downrght boring.  The only time in this film he shows any recognizable human traits is when he's writhing away on the canvas, crying and holding his crushed ribs.  More about THAT later, too.

Second, the story.  I'm pretty sure the character of Creed was a light-heavyweight in the first film.  I guess that wasn't sexy or audience-friendly enough, so he's suddenly a heavyweight in the sequel, whatever.  I guess if we can look past the fact that he's supposed to be the son of someone who died in 1985 yet I'm pretty sure is supposed to be in his mid-twenties, we can overlook the sudden weight jump, too.

My real problem is the mixed message/dropped plot point of the second fight.  The first time Creed fights Viktor Drago, he gets so badly beaten up that he suffers broken ribs and a ruptured kidney.  Drago gets disqualified, which ticked me off at first but then when the reporters are shouting questions at surly (what else?) Creed at the hospital, I thought Creed might say "hey, he kicked my butt, I was going to lose anyway, give him the belt."  That might have been cool.  But nah.

But here's the kicker:  Rocky doesn't want Creed to fight again- Creed's wife is pregnant, he was almost killed in the first fight, nothing more to prove, etc. etc. and most importantly, Rocky is still wracked with guilt for not throwing in the towel when Apollo was being annihilated by Ivan Drago way back in 1985.  He tells Adonis straight on that darn it, he should have thrown that towel, he'll never forgive himself for not throwing that towel, if he had thrown in the towel Apollo might have been upset but he would have been spared to build a relationship with his child,  and would have eventually realized how stupid risking his life for one more moment in the sun truly was.

But in the rematch, Adonis gets beaten up again and is dropped to the canvas by brutal body punches.  He's literally crying with pain as he's lying on the canvas, clutching his re-crushed rib cage- and Rocky doesn't throw in the towel.  Instead, he begs Adonis to get back up (so does Adonis' wife, which is beyond bizarre.)  So Viktor can finish him off, I guess.  I mean, the referee clearly isn't going to rescue Creed- he's not going to stop the fight until Creed vomits up his other kidney from the looks of things.  But I thought Rocky was remorseful because he could have saved Creed's father but froze instead and didn't throw that towel.  So, what the hell?

(Before the final round, Rocky asks Adonis- who is clearly in a great deal of pain, with one eye closed, if he wants to throw in the towel.  Adonis can't even answer- and Rocky mutters approvingly "I didn't think so."  Again- what the hell?  Did the writers just want to make it clear that Rocky learned absolutely nothing from that 1985 fight and that all his "shoulda thrown the towel" nonsense was just that, nonsense?)

And then Creed, with his caved-in lungs, gets up and stops Viktor with a series of head shots which come out of nowhere.  Time is running out in the final round but Viktor's dad demonstrates that he's the only person around with even a shred of humanity and throws in the towel himself, rescuing his son, though it  was pretty obvious that had he not done so Viktor would have won, as the ref was being totally fair in his handling of the bout- the fight would continue until Creed expelled that kidney or Viktor's head was deposited into the third row.

I don't usually play script doctor, but here's how this film could have ended in a much more realistic and perfectly satisfying way:  Creed is the challenger, having opted to hand Viktor the belt despite the disqualification.  In the rematch Creed does much better despite being badly hurt again, and may even be gaining the upper hand late in the fight, but it's also clear that he's suffering from internal bleeding and could die if the contest continues.  Creed knocks down Viktor and has him in serious trouble but its clear that he can't finish him off without an effort that could cost him his life- so as he's on the attack, Rocky throws in the towel.  Creed is upset and angry until he sees his wife climbing into the ring and realizes that the almost became his father in the worst way, being willing to sacrifice years with his child for one great moment of glory.  He closes the circle by shrugging off the fight and embracing his wife, leaving Viktor with a belt which now means nothing to him.

Ok, now that that's fixed, I can get back to snarking on commercials.  And Michael B. Jordan can get back to those acting lessons.  And Sylvester Stallone can stop making these films already.