DONNY: It’s great that you celebrities care about politics. We all know that there’s nothing Americans like more than being told how to vote by multimillionaires from an enclave that is among the least politically diverse in the country.

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ROBERT: But we, the ad consultants of America, have come together to ask for a favor.

PEG: A favor.

DONNY: A favor.

PEG: You see, all of these ads look the same, sound the same, feel the same — and your potential audience is mocking you when they aren’t ignoring you.

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DONNY: And being ignored is death in advertising.

ROBERT: At least Joss Whedon had the sense to make his entry in the genre somewhat humorous:

ROBERT: Granted, Whedon pulls a bait-and-switch–

PEG: A bait-and-switch.

DONNY: A bait-and-switch, leading off with what looks like a non-partisan get-out-the-vote ad before swiftly switching into a vicious denunciation of Donald Trump.

PEG: [silent shot of Peg sadly shaking her head]

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ROBERT: If the box office and Cinemascore for “Drive,” which was pitched as a “Fast and the Furious”–style adventure flick and instead delivered a brooding meditation on violence and duty, taught us anything, it’s that audiences don’t like to be tricked by ads.

DONNY: Setting them up for one thing and delivering something else is a good way to lose them.

PEG: To lose them.

ROBERT: To lose — oh, right, the repetition.

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DONNY: You guys have to stop that.

ROBERT: It’s kind of funny in the Whedon ad above, if only because he goes super-meta in the beginning and highlights the ways in which repetition is used to drive the points he wants to make home.

DONNY: Self-deprecating celebrities will always get a chuckle.

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PEG: But it is disastrous in this message to members of the electoral college headed by Martin Sheen:

DONNY: And somehow even worse in this ad from the team at Art Not War:

ROBERT: I don’t know how to put this delicately, so I’ll just say it: You sound like cultists.

DONNY: It’s even more annoying when you slightly shift emphasis in the words that you stress.

PEG: The words that you stress.

ROBERT: The words that you stress.

PEG: We get it: These are all very important issues. But you don’t need to create brand awareness. Voting isn’t one of those things where if you say it enough times it’ll stick in our heads and we’ll do what you say. I think you would have figured that out after seventeen billion “Ghostbusters” ads playing nonstop on cable TV failed to generate an audience in theaters.

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DONNY: The repetition is bad, but the blank backgrounds are even worse.

ROBERT: We think we understand what you’re doing here. These are very serious topics and you think very serious topics don’t need to be gussied up by production values in order to resonate with viewers. Or that the message will somehow be degraded if you use a bit of artistry. Surely the beautiful people in front of a blinding white or hushed grey-black sheet will get the point across to the plebs.

PEG: But c’mon! You’re Hollywood big shots! You can spring for some green screens or CGI or something, right?

ROBERT: Or at least hire an editor to jazz things up a bit?

DONNY: For God’s sake, there’s more drama and tension in this ad from a milquetoast Midwestern GOP governor who never stood a chance at winning his party’s nomination than there is in any of the three advertisements starring A-list movie star talent above:

PEG: Laugh at the Michael Bay-ification of political ads all you want — chortle at the overly dramatic camera angles; giggle at the montage of scenes of American greatness; titter at the grandiose voice-over; snigger at the lens flares — but I’d watch what that ad is selling.

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ROBERT: I’d follow that man.

DONNY: I’d vote for that dude.

PEG: It’s not like things have always been this bad. But you’ve made us all wish for the halcyon days when Lena Dunham was talking about her “first time” with Barack Obama.

ROBERT: Sure, that was kind of creepy — treating voting like sex is strange, the ultimate effort to make the personal political — but it was snazzily edited and she had, like, some pillows sitting around her so we weren’t wondering if she had been locked in a basement and forced to read a confession into a camera.

DONNY: Quit filming political ads like hostage videos.

PEG: Like hostage videos.

ROBERT: Like hostage videos.

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DONNY: Great, now they’ve got us doing it.

ROBERT: Anyway, you guys have the best marketing departments in the world. You Hollywood folks grossed $11.372 billion last year with a slate of total junk!

PEG: [muttering] Well, not total, I mean, “Arrival” was pretty good and so was “Hell or High Water” and “Hail, Caesar!” and —

DONNY: [interrupting] Our point is that you can do better.

ROBERT: And if you want to change people’s minds —

PEG: — rather than simply making yourself feel better by showing how enlightened you are —