There’s been a lot of talk about which Super Bowl commercial was the worst. The competition was pretty stiff this year. Was it the Nationwide ad where a little boy turns out to be dead? Or the creepy one with Jeff Bridges in a couple’s bedroom? Or one of the many commercials that were supposed to be funny but were complete duds instead?
To me, the worst commercial was the Nissan ad where a race-car driver has a son, is an absentee Dad who ignores and repeatedly disappoints his kid, and then tries to make up for it by giving the kid a new car. In short, you can cure your crappy performance in the fatherhood department if you just shell out enough for a really neat car! Hard to believe that even a car manufacturer would think that message would promote car sales.
But this commercial wasn’t bad just because it made me kind of embarrassed to be a Dad, either. I really hated it because the soundtrack was Harry Chapin’s awful Cat’s In The Cradle song, which has to be one of the worst and most depressing songs ever recorded — and not just because Harry Chapin really couldn’t sing a note. It’s a trite message about a Dad who works his life away rather than playing ball with his kid. Because he wasn’t playing catch with his son, his priorities obviously were misplaced. Who cares if the overworked Dad has to labor those long hours because he’s trying to put food on the table, buy clothes for his family, and send his kids to college. But those are the kind of real world nuances that the sledgehammer subtlety of Cat’s In The Cradle just couldn’t capture.
These days, Dads usually aren’t cast in a very favorable light, and the Nissan ad is just the latest in a long line of Dad dissings. I’m tired of it. The ad agency that came up with that effort should be sentenced to listening to Cat’s In The Cradle for a solid week.
Who would have thought that they would remake any John Wayne movie, much less True Grit? Have they remade Sands of Iwo Jima, or The Searchers, or for that matter The Sons of Katie Elder? Wayne was such a huge personality that it often was difficult to separate him from the story. The Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, took on that challenge, however, and the results are strikingly good. It is a beautifully photographed movie, with an excellent soundtrack and a stunning script. To me, the biggest star of the movie is the English language. Were the mud-spattered, tobacco-crusted residents of the old West really so articulate, with vocabularies as sweeping as the broad western vistas? Whether they were or weren’t, it is a pleasure to listen to the actors speak the lines and appreciate the expressive richness of the spoken word.
The acting is pretty good, too. Hailee Steinfeld, who plays precocious and iron-willed 14-year-old Mattie Ross, has a breakout performance. The remake succeeds, in part, because the focus of the film is on Mattie Ross and her quest to avenge her father, and it wouldn’t have worked if the actor playing Ross had not delivered. Steinfeld does, in spades. Jeff Bridges has by now perfected the grizzled, whiskey-soaked hero role, and he is terrific — funny, pathetic, maddening, and then awesomely heroic when the chips are down. Matt Damon is excellent as LaBoeuf, the talkative Texas Ranger. Watching Damon convincingly playing a man of the frontier, you realize that he is developing a portfolio of fine performances in a wide variety of roles. Damon is one of the most versatile actors of his generation, and this film gives him another chance to display his talents. There are a number of other great performances; my personal favorite was the beleaguered stable owner who comes to regret negotiating with the single-minded Mattie bent on properly settling her dead father’s affairs.
Webner House 