Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials of 2005
By Christopher Neiger, 02-11-05

The Super Bowl, for sports fans means parties, big screen TVs and comradery with friends. For advertisers, it means instant blanket marketing, $80,000 a second and a way to show off their originality.

Like every year, the anticipation of the commercials never lives up to the actual delivery, but here are some of the top winners and bottom losers of this year's Super Bowl commercial line-up.

The Best Countdown (from funny to the funniest)

5. Bud Light - "Parachuting": Anheuser-Busch easily had a monopoly on the evening when it came to commercial time. But, their ad on skydiving, was the only one out of their line-up that made me laugh made me laugh. It was the one where a group of skydivers jumped out of a plane and one scared jumper won't do it. The skydiving instructor tries to entice the jumper by throwing a six-pack of Bud Light out the door, but instead the pilot came running out of the cockpit and jumped out after the beer. Simply Hilarious.

4. CareerBuilder.com - "Monkey Business": Ok, as if monkeys running around in the office wearing business suits wasn't funny enough already, they put them in a boardroom with a whoopee cushion.

3. Ameriquest - "Cat Killer": This is the one where a guy cooking dinner looks like he's killed his girlfriend's cat. She walks in and sees spaghetti sauce all over the floor and the guy has the limp cat and a large knife in his hands. Cat lovers and PETA may have found this ad less than amusing, but it was great.

2. FedEx/Kinkos - "Dancing Burt": This commercial should definitely be in some sort of commercial hall of fame. Even if you didn't think it was that funny, Burt Reynolds getting kicked in the groin by a guy in a grizzly bear suit is classic.

1. Ameriquest - "Taser Scare": Most people probably would not put this one as the funniest commercial, but the sheer fact that Ameriquest would poke fun at all those people who walk around with those ridiculous cell phone ear attachments is pure genius. Maybe they will finally see how crazy they look for once.

The Worst Countdown (from stupid to just plain sucked)

5. Ford- "Frozen in Fargo": The car commercials this year were decent, the Cadillac zooming out of the tunnel like a bullet in a barrel, the Ford trucks lined up outside of the bar, but the frozen guy in the Mustang did not evoke any kind of positive emotion for me. Hopefully they got a group rate on the commercial, since they played it three times.

4. McDonald's - "Lincoln Fry": If you're going to spend $2.4 million dollars on one advertisement, shouldn't it leave the prospective consumer wanting to actually buy your product? At least they didn't feed us any more, "Stay away from my chicken selects" commercials.

3. Pizza Hut - "It's the Muppet Show": The Muppets are great. They are funny by themselves, but put them around pizza and something goes terribly wrong. Pizza Hut would have been better off just using Kermit as their spokesperson this year.

2. MBNA - "Gladys Knight Playing Rugby": The viewing public must have missed the memo about why Gladys Knight playing rugby is funny, because we all didn't seem to get the commercial.

1. Bud Light - "Cockatoo to the Rescue": A cockatoo at a bar saves a damsel in distress from a shady guy who's trying to pick her up. The bird speaks with some sort of Spanish accent, although not a good one, and hits the guy multiple times as he walks away. Maybe Anheuser-Busch should spend less money buying up time slots for the Super Bowl and spend more money paying their advertising department to create better ads.

To view more Super Bowl commercials visit movieweb.com.