The Real Thing Indeed

Yesterday we went to dinner with at Adam's house. Adam is a friend of Harold and Angie's who we've hung out with a couple of times. He made a Thai curry that was delicious and we spent a few hours hanging out and talking with everybody.

There were about 10 people there altogether, and somehow we got around to talking about American TV. I mentioned that Australian television commercials are by far the cheesiest things ever committed to film in the history of the moving image. Seriously, it's even worse than the crap ads they show on the Spanish channel back in the States.

It is interesting to watch though. You can instantly tell when a foreign ad comes on because they're the ones that are slick and well produced. There are some ads that I even recognize from back home.

For example, you might know the Coke ad where this surfer guy is trying to open his bottle. He struggles with it for a few seconds and then some hot looking girl surfer comes up to him, grabs the bottle, and uses the kid's belt buckle to pop the top.

That commercial gets a lot of play here, but the interesting thing is that all the voices are dubbed over with an Australian accent! It's bizarre to watch - every time I see it I just have to laugh. Who knows, maybe Aussies only feel comfortable buying their sugared water from other Aussies.

I'm hoping they start implementing this on a broader scale. They could start with the news. Maybe they could overdub George Bush's voice with that overenthusiastic, idiotic Crocodile Hunter guy. At least then he'd be entertaining.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 10, 2005 at 08:49 PM in Australia | Permalink