Made You Stare

Nowadays everyone is too businesslike, always in a rush, no time for fun. Places like train stations are associated with boredom and stress but this advert by T-Mobile turns that on its head as we see maybe a hundred people dancing to a succession of classic songs, among them ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ by Rainbow, ‘Shout’ by Lulu, and ‘Don’t Cha’ by the Pussycat Dolls and Busta Rhymes. The humor in this sequence lies in the fact that the last thing you expect while boring yourself rigid at a train station is a bunch of wannabe Michael Jacksons taking to the stage and showing off their funky dancing. The real surprise here is the way the dancers are totally synchronized with each other, bowing and jiggling and pirouetting at exactly the same time, as if this whole thing had been painstakingly rehearsed. There’s a bit of smoke and mirrors here because all the dancers are dressed as if they are the usual commuters – in suits and ties or hoodies or overcoats – but it’s clear enough they are trained pros as soon as they start shaking their booties. They subtly adapt their dancing styles to each genre of music as it arrives on the P.A., so they are happily waltzing along to Mozart one second and then disco dancing to ‘Get Down On It’ by Kool and the Gang the next. The tagline of the commercial is ‘Life is for sharing’ and this is backed up by the shots, about halfway through, of other commuters filming the whole event on their camera phones or grinningly phoning their friends about what they have just seen. Oh isn’t commercial-world so much more cheesy than the real world? But then this clip kind of mixes the two because you can see the shock on the faces of real commuters when all this staged funky dancing kicks off and a sort of publicity stunt has been pulled. Perhaps this would have been funnier had completely untrained dancers been employed to do their thang, being all clumsy and making total jackasses of themselves. Just a suggestion for a sequel, that’s all.