Jim Carrey brought back a rather obscure old character of his for a Super Bowl ad promoting Verizon’s 5G wireless internet. The character is from his 1996 comedy-thriller The Cable Guy, who was a seemingly-ordinary cable installer that ends up stalking a customer.
The commercial riffs on the idea that cable, and by extension Carrey’s character of Chip, is going out of fashion. We start with Carrey knocking on the door of a young cord-cutter, who quickly assures him that she doesn’t need cable anymore, and inviting himself in to see her wireless setup.
It’s a pretty basic ad setup, but it’s always nice to see Carrey flex his old physical comedy acting muscles, put on the odd lisp of his old character, and work in some line readings that feel like improvised ad-libs even in just a 60-second long commercial.
Carrey has been acting far less frequently than his career peak in the ’90s and early 2000s. His performance in the 2018 Hulu series Kidding was critically acclaimed, and he will reprise his role as Dr. Ivo Robotnik in 2022’s Sonic The Hedgehog 2.
