Super Sunday was stuffed (overstuffed?) with stars

This Super Bowl will forever be remembered as The Night of a Kajillion (or so) Stars.
Not on the field (although there were some there, too), but in the commercials — including John Travolta, shown here.
In the past, many of the best Super Bowl commercials have been star-free. They had real horses or fake frogs or whatever. But this year, no one wanted to risk that.
Rock/pop/rap stars? One commercial had Jack Harlow and Elton John, another had Snoop Dogg, a third had Ozzy Osbourne, Joan Jett, a KISS guy and more.
Movie stars? There was Bradley Cooper, Adam Driver, Steve Martin, Amy Schumer, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, John Travolta, Brie Larson, Paul Rudd, Bryan Cranston and more.
Both? The night had room for J-Lo and her current guy (Ben Affleck) and one of her past guys (Diddy).
And that list doesn’t even include all the ads for movies and such. Add them in and you reach Ford/Costner/Stallone overload.
Most of the star commercials were fun. (Exceptions were Maya Rudolph’s M&M’s commercial and Will Ferrell’s GM commercial, both kind of jumbled.) A few were quite brilliant … especially Travolta singing the praises of T-Mobile (shown here with Donald Faison and Zach Braff) to the tune of one of his “Grease” songs.
Still, if I had to pick my favorite commercial it would be … the Farmer’s Dog spot, flashing through the life of a girl and her dog.
That one had warmth, but several others went for fun – the Trojan horse defeated by Crowdstrike … a liquor tribute to the contributions of Canada … and some solace for people worried about “premature electrification.” Each of those had wit; none, as it happened, had stars.
A few other observations:
— The halftime show left me cold. The visuals were impressive, lifting Rihanna to new levels, then bringing her down. The dancers were a bit odd – lots of white-clad folks in hoodies, suggesting a sperm chorus line. But the music had a dispassionate sameness to it.
— The pre-game music was the opposite – simple, unforced, letting the song prevail. Sheryl Lee Ralph, Babyface and (especially) Chris Stapleton delivered well.
— The movie ads were dazzling … but also reflected the post-pandemic state of the film business: Pretty much every movie was in the action/adventure/superhero mode … and was at least a sequel. In a class of its own, however, was the gorgeous tribute to this year’s 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s move to Hollywood.
— The post-post-game show, “Next Level Chef,” is fairly entertaining. This was the second-season opener; the next episode (8 p.m. Thursday) is too hyper at times, but focuses on interesting contestants.
— Greg Olsen may have been the first person to do a job audition before 100 million people. Olsen was working his first Super Bowl… but Fox had already hired Tom Brady to take his spot next year as the network’s top analyst. I’m sure all the sports networks saw that he did a terrific job.
— And the game was nice, too.