Heartbroken Pedro Pascal is looking at a happy version of himself, though they’re both wearing AirPods
Director Spike Jonze has made a beautiful film about AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, starring Pedro Pascal, but you’ll be bored long before it’s over.
As long as the tips provided with the AirPods 4 with Noise Cancellation fit your ears, they are amazing. The instant you turn on that noise cancellation, you get it, you feel enveloped in your music, and you feel as if the entire world has gone away.
Only, you really do get that instantly. You might never tire of it, you might always relish how calming and peaceful AirPods noise cancellation is, but it does not take you 5 minutes and 36 seconds to comprehend how good they are.
That’s how long Spike Jonze’s new Apple advert, “Someday”, runs for. It’s an ad but it does look like a film, partly from being so extended, and partly from being shot just beautifully.
The clear message, though, is AirPods Good, and that’s fine, if obvious, if over-done here. But there is also a rather unclear message in the film, which maybe unintentionally gives it a sense of doom.
This comes from a very Woody Allen like sequence contrasting a bleak winter with a technicolor summer. As in Allen’s “Stardust Memories,” we are with someone in quite miserable surroundings, and they want to be acrss the street with the happy, sunny people.
In this case, it’s actor Pedro Pascal both in the miserable scenes where he appears to have broken up with someone, and the sunny scenes when he appears to have got over her. Since we both start and end with Pascal in heavy, wearying snow, the sunshine sequence in the middle feels like a flash-forward or maybe a flashback to a long-gone happy time.
And in that happy time, there is a brief conversation with Pascal being invited somewhere, and being told people are glad he’s back. It feels like foreshadowing, and so when immediately afterwards he pops in AirPods and crosses the street, you expect to see him run over.
Instead, Pascal gets to walk around a bit and, once he’s turned on his AirPods, to dance to the music he’s hearing. The whole world around him dances too, with passersby breaking out into dance moves as he passes them.
In that sense, it’s a little reminiscent of “(500) Days of Summer,” written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, directed by Marc Webb. In that, star Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s utter exuberance in one scene propels him and everyone around him into an exultant dance sequence.
Spike Jonze’s “Someday” has dance, has energy, but doesn’t have the character and narrative that drove the sequence in Gordon-Levitt film.
Instead, it’s a bit tedious, if utterly beautiful. The same thing with strangers dancing to music happens over and over again, until you wish the lyrics included the phrase “We get it, enough already.”
Then when the glorious summer is over, Pascal makes eye contact with the version of himself in deepest winter. They share a look, they share a smile.
And winter Pascal carries on his day, with yet more strangers dancing around him. Decide for yourself whether winter is the future or the past, or whether Apple is just saying you should’ve bought AirPods sooner.
The way it depicts active noise cancellation is accurate — from how you turn it on to the sounds the AirPods make — and they really are as impressive as the film claims. They really do make you fee like you’re in a musical, and AirPods really are the best Apple earbuds for most people.
But for a more practical and rather shorter view of the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, read the AppleInsider comparison between these and the AirPods Pro 2.
