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Have you ever had a Michelob Ultra? Sure you have. Just go to your faucet, turn it on, collect it in a glass, and have your dog sneeze in it. For the bubbles.
This is a commercial for Michelob Ultra, and it’s bold. It’s EXCEPTIONALLY bold for a beer-scented beverage to repurpose the 1975 Tom T. Hall song “I Like Beer” for the purposes of its brand, and I can almost respect it. The brand, again, is that of a beverage that takes everything pleasurable about beer, removes it all except for the carbonation, and then delivers something that is still inherently unhealthy, just less so.
Your options are as follows:
- Don’t drink an unhealthy beverage
- Drink an unhealthy beverage that tastes good and gets you drunk
- Drink a slightly healthier beverage that’s still inherently unhealthy and tastes bad and cannot possibly get anyone over the age of seven drunk
I don’t envy the job of the people trying to sell the last one. And, to their credit, this sells it as much as possible. There are people biking and swimming and working out, but they can still have a beer-scented beverage, so it can’t be all bad, right?
Dunno. But the worst part about this commercial is that someone spent money to involve Chris Pratt, and all he does is mug for the camera while pretending like he has trouble doing different forms of exercise. Like he hasn’t spent the past seven years working out to be a convincing superhero and dinosaur tamer. His only line is “Uh oh.” He’ll probably get $50,000 or more every time it airs. I don’t get it, but maybe I’m not playing enough 4D chess.
Is this commercial worth $7.7 million?
Maybe! The idea is to sing “I Love Beer” and make people think that Michelob Ultra actually is beer, but not the kind that makes you fat, so maybe! It’s a good, catchy song with a hook that’s easy to share and appropriate for your own parties, so perhaps just the reintroduction of the song into the cultural lexicon will be enough for Michelob to recoup their investment.
I still would have made Chris Pratt sing the song, though. Get yer money’s worth, people.
Edit: Ohhhh, so they made this whole campaign about how Pratt is cast as an extra, and that’s the joke. It includes a shirtless Pratt. My complaint is withdrawn.