Super Bowl Sunday is a major American holiday, and Super Bowl LVIII was no exception. Prior to the game starting, viewership was expected to break the record previously held by Super Bowl XLIX with nearly 115 million average viewers. Many viewers were football fans, but many more were watching with the intent of catching a glimpse of Taylor Swift, watching in order to see Usher perform at halftime or to just watch the commercials.
Since the Super Bowl has been the most watched program on television since the 1969 moon landing, companies naturally want to put their best advertisements on air. This year’s commercials were, as usual, a spectacular array of celebrities and products, but some stood above the rest. Here are five of the greatest commercials from Super Bowl LVIII.
5. Uber Eats
Uber Eats centered their commercial around the idea that, in order to remember something, you have to forget something else. In this case, different people were remembering that Uber Eats delivers whatever thing they needed, but then forgetting something important.
This setup made for a bunch of different punchlines with a handful of celebrities. Jennifer Aniston opened the commercial by saying the key phrase, “in order to remember something, you have to forget something else.” Later in the commercial, it turned out that the thing she forgot was David Schwimmer, who she famously co-starred for a decade with in “Friends.” There were also funny scenes where Schwimmer and Victoria Beckham couldn’t remember the name of the Spice Girls, Beckham’s former girl group and a scene where the rapper Jelly Roll panics about the origin of his tattoos.
4. Pringles
The Pringles Super Bowl commercial starred Chris Pratt sporting a fancy new mustache. At the start of the commercial, a cashier who he is buying Pringles from notices a resemblance between Pratt and Mr. Pringle and posts a picture of him online. The post quickly gains traction and by the end of the commercial, Pratt is starring in the new Pringles movie, Mr. P. This commercial is funny on the merit of Pratt with a mustache alone, but the joke at the end is what makes this commercial special. Pratt has gained a reputation for taking every role under the sun in increasingly bizarre movies, so him taking a role as the star of the pringle movie is just close enough to reality to make the joke go from funny to hysterical.
3. Doritos Dinamita
Doritos’ Super Bowl commercial advertises their Doritos Dinamita chips and features Jenna Ortega and Danny Ramirez. It is an action-packed commercial in which Ramirez took a bag of Doritos that Ortega’s grandmothers, Dina and Mita, wanted. The Doritos commercial stands out among the rest for its quick jokes, such as the two grandmothers crashing a car with their mobility scooters as well as the exciting chase scenes. Most of all, though, this commercial is special because the stars were not A-list celebrities. Dina and Mita were played by Olivia Negron and Patricia Mauceri, both of whom displayed exquisite comedic timing throughout the ad. Doritos’ ability to make a funny and exciting commercial without name-dropping either of their celebrities is applaudable.
2. State Farm
State Farm managed to get Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito to star in their commercial. That alone could put State Farm in the top five, but they provided a good script for their stars, making it a contender for one of the funniest commercials of this year. The joke at the core of the commercial was making fun of Scwartzenegger’s iconic voice, since he says “neighbaah” instead of neighbor. Schwarzenegger plays himself, playing Agent State Farm, an action hero State Farm employee. Naturally, he fits right into that role, just as he would fit into the role of any action hero. At the end of the commercial, DeVito shows up to say the State Farm motto, “like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” in a reference to “Twins,” the movie which co-starred Schwarzenegger and DeVito.
1. NFL Born to Play
The greatest commercial at Super Bowl LVIII was the National Football League’s (NFL) own Born to Play commercial. The commercial publicized the NFL’s International Player Pathway program. The commercial focused on Quishi, a boy from Ghana with dreams to play in the NFL. Throughout the nearly two-and-a-half-minute commercial, Quishi imagines NFL stars talking and playing with him. In the end, Quishi meets New York Giants legend Osi Umenyiora, a former international player who grew up in Nigeria. In the most heartwarming moment of the night, Umenyiora told Quishi, “it doesn’t matter where you’re born, as long as you’re born to play.” The Born to Play commercial may not be funny, witty or clever, but it succeeds in telling a heartwarming story in the short span of time afforded to a typical Super Bowl advertisement.