Ryan Reynolds has graced us with much during his illustrious career. Though his turn as the Green Lantern may technically have been a crime against humanity, his later performances as cultural icons Deadpool and Pikachu saved his heroic visage in the eyes of the average American. Now I’ve long held a soft spot for Mr. Reynolds, but even I couldn’t have imagined his most recent achievement: he made a good commercial.
I don’t mean a commercial that is good at being a commercial. I mean a commercial that is good as a piece of, dare I say it, art. His content studio Maximum Effort put together an ad for Match.com that features Satan hooking up with a personification of the year 2020, played by a woman who will undoubtedly get weird looks wherever she goes from now on. It’s hardly the first great ad Reynolds’ studio has put out (you can find an excellent spot for R.M. Williams boots that features a nude Hugh Jackman on YouTube), but it definitely made a special impression by focusing on the most hated year of our lifetimes. In truth, I only have one quibble about Reynolds’ devilishly funny ad.
There aren’t nearly enough wasps in it. As a stinging-thing aficionado myself, I found the unresolved tension of the “murder hornet” teaser at the beginning simply unbearable. The Asian giant hornets MATCHED with Satan at the beginning!! And he turned away from their charismatically chitinous exteriors without even giving them a chance?? I just don’t believe someone with taste as good as Satan could look into a female Vespa mandarinia’s face and turn her down. Have you seen that guys interior decorating skills? He has an eye for the finer things!
Now it’s true that on the evilness scale, Asian giant hornets and 2020 are not in the same league. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the hornets don’t have a drop of evil in them at all (they’re just animals, people, get over it). They just try to go about their little wasp business, and any ventures they take into the Pacific Northwest are entirely our fault (plus there’s no evidence they’ve established a breeding population there yet, and hopefully the efforts of researchers will keep things that way). But it still stung to see Satan rebuff them so callously. I’d highly recommend that Ryan Reynolds produce a sequel where we get to see the hornets find some happiness of their own—just as long as they stay within their native range.
Darren Incorvaia can be followed on Twitter @MegaDarren.