Friday, February 17, 2006

What's on my mind? Tim Hortons commercial

(go to this page to Watch the Commercial HERE) <-- EDIT August 19, 2008: this link is broken, but you can view it here on YouTube
The Tim Hortons commercial has been on my mind- the one that’s been playing on the CBC during the Olympics stuff. Here’s the basic summary/description of it, taken from here:

Lou, a Chinese immigrant, raises his son, Jimmy, to study and work hard. When Lou finds young Jimmy playing street hockey, he expresses his disapproval. Many years later, an elderly Lou enters a hockey arena with a tray of Tim Hortons coffee. He heads into the stands, and hands a coffee to Jimmy – who is an adult now. Jimmy seems surprised to see his father there. Lou explains that he has come to see his grandson Tommy (Jimmy’s son) play hockey. It is soon revealed that Lou used to secretly watch his son play at the same arena years ago, and that he always enjoyed a Tim Hortons coffee while he watched. Lou and Jimmy share a moment, as they each enjoy a delicious Tim Hortons coffee and proudly watch Tommy play.

First impressions: Wow Chinese-Canadians in a commercial! Wow, Chinese-Canadians in a national commercial! Wow, Chinese-Canadians in a commercial where they aren’t completely stereotyped!
Also, hey wait. The commercial's kinda cute and it’s going to give some people a nice warm happy feeling inside of them that makes them go, “Awww…”

But not me. At least not anymore. Gaaaah…it just bugs me (a little...maybe...) every time I see this because the old man’s dialogue is so forced as he speaks chopped up, broken English, when it’s very clear that he’s fluent!!! After living in Canada for so long, it’s obvious he would have gained a larger vocabulary (since his adult son speaks to him in English, not Chinese) and even the “old” him in the flashback has him speaking a semi-decent grammatical English sentence!!! But yet, as he talks to his son as he watches his grandson play, he says things like, “I come watch” and “You right-wing.”


[Tim bangs forehead on table] Am I the only one who sees this?
Yeah yeah, I know. It’s just a commercial. No biggie, there’s more important stuff in the world happening now. If there’s one thing positive to say about the commercial though, it’s nice to see they capture the grumpy-old-man aspect as he says without a smile, at the end, “Gimme my picture back.”

I did a search on Blogger’s blog search thingymajigbob-eroonee (sort it by date, and the earliest post that talks about this should be around February 10, 2006), just out of curiosity to see what other people are saying. Mostly females are writing about how they feel about this commercial and how it brings tears to their eyes and etc etc diddly-squat (I should have known).

Congratulations to the marketing department who thought of this commercial. No congratulations to the script writers for the cheesy old man’s lines and the old man for speaking bad English on purpose.

And for the sake of pointing my finger and criticizing (just because I can): This person thought (but used to think) its a a commercial about an "Asian-American" family, and this person thinks the people are Japanese. Ha.


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While walking home yesterday, I saw something dart to the right of me onto someone’s driveway, and I thought it was cat. And so I looked, and there was a raccoon, sitting, staring back at me. We stared at each other (haven't seen one in years), and I started to talk to it and it stared at me some more, as if it didn’t know what I was saying. And then it started to walk away, and when I pretended to follow it for a few steps, it just looked at me and kept walking away, not scared at all. Cute little thing. I wished I had my camera.

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Cheapest gas I saw today was 88.7¢/litre.

4 comments:

Bernice said...

haha the guy who you said thought it was an asian-american fixed it and now it says third generation asian-canadian. =)

oh and I commented on that person's lj and told them the guy was chinese =D

Tim said...

the power of the internet!
[pumps fist in the air]
hoo-ah!

Anonymous said...

What does Ming Ming Ba mean??
grandpa says it as they are walking back into the house during the flash back part.

Anonymous said...

Ming Ming Bah= "Do you understand?"