It doesn’t seem right for John Lewis to release one of its adverts in the summer. I was under the impression that there was a ceasefire during the non-Christmas period, allowing time for Red Cross volunteers to treat victims suffering an overdose of mediocre covers of Britpop hits by breathy female vocalists. But the newly rebranded John Lewis & Partners broke the truce on Tuesday, and detonated a truly awful advertisement during Bake Off.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s a harrowing tale about a psychopathic mullet-haired primary school drama teacher who, after years of sub-par recitals, finally loses it and pressgangs his pupils into staging his nonsensical musical, a tedious We Will Rock You fanfiction set on Mars, apparently. The children are forced to sing a poorly edited version of Bohemian Rhapsody, with verses and stanzas hacked to fit the two-and-a-half-minute runtime (but don’t worry, it feels much, much longer), with different ill-fitting lyrics thrown in at random (“Mama, just killed a Martian” is a particularly egregious one). At the end, it descends into screaming as the children dodge surely illegal pyrotechnics in their worryingly flammable costumes, all while the teacher watches on, a sadistic grin on his face, his mullet bobbing ominously in silent laughter. I haven’t seen the extended cut, but we can assume that it ends with a 10-hour hostage situation where the teacher is eventually killed by police to a breathy female cover version of Don’t Stop Me Now.
Related: John Lewis department store cuts 270 jobs as it rebrands
I stood up and shouted: “What level of reality are we existing on here? Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”
Continue reading...from Advertising | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wPpUxF
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment