General Motors has released a Super Bowl ad where the Austin Powers villains have become preachy climate justice warriors because nothing can just be fun anymore
· Feb 12, 2022 · NottheBee.com

I'm sorry but this is just cringe-worthy and unbearable:

We've already been over the fact that our pop culture is stuck in what seems to be a permanent rut of cultural recycling, in which all the stuff Millennials grew up watching is being endlessly churned out in clumsily repackaged cash-grabs.

This is more of the same. it's also embarrassingly preachy and sanctimonious. Dr. Evil and his crew of clumsy supervillains were not interested in "saving the world." Whatever their humorous elements, their characters were not interested in altruistic environmentalism, even the hyper-capitalistic style of it practiced by General Motors.

It's just stupid. We all know this.

General Motors is plainly trying to appeal to the 30- and 40-somethings who (a) liked watching Austin Powers when they were 14 years old, and who (b) now believe that climate change is "the number-one threat to the world."

In doing so they have made a clumsy and unfunny mashup of cultural nostalgia and moralistic environmentalist claptrap.

It fails as an ad for General Motors and it fails as a funny callback to Austin Powers. It is a total failure.


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