Stella Artois just gave us the ’90s character team up that literally no one was asking for. In their newest Super Bowl commercial advertising their clean water initiative, Stella Artois has created the oddest pairing of pre-2000s icons: Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski and Carrie Bradshaw.
Last week, Bridges posted a teaser to the ad on social media that left us hoping for the best and anticipating the worst when he walked into a bar dressed as The Dude. Was this the long awaited sequel to the Coen brothers’ classic, or more likely a Super Bowl commercial? The Feb. 3 date featured at the end led us to guess the latter. While our suspicions were correct, we are left wishing The Dude stayed in the ’90s.
Both The Big Lebowski and Sex and the City have been subject to endless sequel rumors for years now, seemingly making the decision to bring The Dude and Bradshaw back to the screen a no-brainer. But while we can all agree that replacing Matt Damon as the public face of Water.org and Stella Artois’ annual team-up after a year of questionable #MeToo comments and public apologies was the right move, using two of Hollywood’s most beloved characters to sell beer to football fans is not exactly what we had in mind.
Beyond this being a highly unwanted team-up, the ad also asks us to suspend belief to an unwarranted degree. It’s safe to say The Dude and Carrie Bradshaw do not exist on the same coast, let alone the same universe. Hers is one of Fifth Avenue apartments and Manolo Blahniks, while The Dude exists in bowling alleys and diners. These two would never walk into the same bar. In another blasphemous and highly unbelievable turn the commercial shows the two giving up their signature cocktails, a cosmopolitan and White Russian respectively, for the Belgian Pilsner.
Good cause or not, we’re choosing to pretend this mini revival never happened.
