World's Funniest Commercials: 2006

My comment applies not only to the 2009 version of this show, but to all previous years as well.

This show is consistently vulgar and useless. The commercials featured are almost never funny or otherwise worthwhile. It's odd that so many of the spots are foreign, like British or French. That fails to capitalize on a valuable double market where the viewers will not only be entertained by great ads, but they might also be enticed to buy some Bud Light. That can't happen when the products advertised are only available in France. I love commercials and use my DVR to record and edit down all sorts of commercials, all the time. However when I watch this show I usually don't save not even a single commercial out of the entire show. That's useless.

A much, much, much better show is "Firebrand." On a one hour show of that I save almost every commercial. They are excellent and outstanding, real works of art. This show was on the "Ion" channel but unfortunately the show failed and is no longer aired and also the "Firebrand.com" web site has gone offline. That's unfortunate but if you like commercials it may be worth digging to find copies of this show on youtube or whatever.

As for vulgar, the editors of "World's Funniest Commercials" are partial to spots that feature sex, homosexuality, farting, or other vulgar themes. A great and dramatic example of this partiality is the "from your brother" spot. In this spot a man and woman are shown undressed in bed at the end of a love making session. The man turns to the woman and says "That was incredible! Where did you learn that?" She says "From your brother." Now that might be slightly funny, I'll admit. However, this spot was featured on the show at least two years in a row, in 2006 and 2007. Not only that, but the punchline was used as a teaser to advertise the show, and as such it was played over and over and over and over, including repeatedly before and after commercial breaks. Obviously the producers think this is a very very funny spot. Thankfully in 2008 this spot was not featured.

In the 2009 show there is a spot of a squirrel chewing a breath mint and then making an epic frosty fart that puts out a forest fire. It's not funny, it's just juvenile, crude, vulgar, and stupid. To make matters worse, after this spot we cut to a live action skit with host Kevin Nealon and his "dad" wherein his dad farts in his face. Unless this show is targeted at 6 year olds, this material is in patently poor taste and is simply the lowest form of "humor" possible. I turned the show off at this point and won't ever be tuning in again.

Another crude spot in the 2009 edition shows an empty condom wrapper (see a pattern here?) floating through a cityscape. It passes within sight of a young teenage couple who are inspired to begin making love. It then passes within site of an elderly couple, who are inspired to make love on the dining room table. At this point I said out loud to my wife: "homosexual." The condom wrapper then floats within sight of an attractive woman who is inspired to draw the curtains and instigate a threesome. Finally the punchline is that it floats within sight of two male policeman in their police car on the street, with an obvious conclusion. Oh yeah, and the spot before this one is about Viagra.

Well if that's the type of material that you enjoy than fine, tune in, but if the above sounds distasteful to you then don't bother with this show, vulgarity is a pervasive theme. Vulgarity aside, the spots simply aren't funny.

Kevin Nealon as a host is also totally useless. In none of the shows is his hosting even remotely funny. It's the most boring, trite material you've ever seen. In the 2009 edition he abandons the "host" approach and instead walks us through the commercials by pretending to show them to his ad-agency president dad via live action skits. The skits are intentionally unfunny, as they show the dad's ideas for funny commercials that are such lame and unfunny ideas that we are supposed to be entertained by their badness. Unfortunately showing us ideas that are unfunny results in footage that is unfunny. It seems that any producer could have seen that coming.

Nealon informs his dad this year that he doesn't pick the spots in the show, he only hosts the show. I doubt that. The ads chosen show a vulgar and juvenile taste and I have always blamed Nealon for that bad taste. If it's not Nealon, than it's some single person on the production staff responsible. If the spots were selected by committee there's no way such bad taste would show so clearly.