The British department store commercial, in which a winsome young boy gets a mail-order bride for his pet penguin, is this year’s contender for best Christmas commerical – on par with last year’s Apple “Misunderstood.” Check it out below. The song is ‘Real Love’ written by John Lennon and performed by Tom Odell. The fictional penguins Mabel and Monty are already viral uperstars in merry old England with their own Twitter accounts and a a full range of merchandise, including penguin onesies and socks.
From The Telegraph:
The sixty second film is made by Adam&Eve/DDB, the agency which has created most of the department store’s commercials, and it ticks many tried-and-tested John Lewis boxes. There is an old song, covered by an upcoming pop star. This time, however, the singer is not a breathy young woman, but a breathy young man: Tom Odell, who squeezes every drop of emotion out of the slightly ropey John Lennon song, ‘Real Love’.
No one speaks, the story is told just through the pictures and the song: “Just like little girls and boys / playing with their little toys / seems all we really were doing / was waiting for love.”
There is snow (fake, it was filmed in July), there is a Christmas tree, there is a nice middle class family from east London (a lot of it was filmed in Victoria Park, Hackney). And there is nothing so crass as a shot of a John Lewis shop.
The advert is in many ways far less ambitious than last year’s Bear and Hare animated epic, which baffled many viewers with its complex story of the hare waking up the bear from its hibernation with a made-in-China alarm clock. Private Eye magazine spoofed the advert by featuring a woodland massacre on its Christmas cover last year.
Instead, John Lewis returns to the simple — and tear-duct inducing guarantee — formula of cute boy waiting for Christmas Day. He spends his time playing with his friend, who happens to be a real-life penguin. The penguin looks very realistic, though it turns out it was filmed using CGI.
Sam, the boy, and Monty, the penguin, go to the park, they play with Lego, they bounce on the trampoline together. But Sam realises that Monty is lonely, that he looks wistfully at couples holding hands on the bus. So, for Christmas Sam gets Monty the one thing he really wants: a mate. Under the tree on Christmas morning he finds Mabel, a lady penguin.
The message is clear: John Lewis is not just a high street shop, selling casseroles and linen but love itself. Excuse me, while I dab away a little moisture near my eye.
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