Samsung’s celeb-packed Oscar commercial is funny and on-point

Remember the star-studded selfie that Ellen DeGeneres took with the Galaxy Note 3 during the 2014 Oscars? The image garnered 225,000 retweets per minute, a record that stood until last night, when Leo DiCaprio finally got to take home a statuette, generating a whopping 440,000 tweets every 60 seconds.

Samsung couldn’t top Ellen’s selfie moment at last night’s Academy Awards, but the 90-second commercial it aired during the show may be the next best thing.

The clip features cameos from Lil Wayne, Wesley Snipes, Doc Rivers, James Harden, and William H. Macy, the last of whom gets to realize his spokesperson fantasy via virtual reality. The commercial manages to be genuinely funny and just a tad weird, mostly in a good way. At the same time, it does a great job of explaining the key selling points of the Galaxy S7/Edge, Gear S2, and Gear VR.

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Devices from competitors including Apple, LG, and Motorola make brief appearances, unsurprisingly, in unflattering situations.

It’s good to see Samsung putting out good commercials, harkening back to the days when Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller was jealously chiding his own creatives for failing to come up with a proper answer to Samsung’s ad blitz.

We don’t know how much Samsung paid for this ad, but it’s probably in the order of millions. That’s another reminder of just how hard life can be for Samsung’s competitors, most of which can’t even dream of matching Samsung’s ad spending. Case in point, LG, which candidly admitted it will pay more money than it probably affords to on promoting the new G5.

What do you think of the commercial?