What's Funny? Uncle Drew

For my next what’s funny I decided to pick a Pepsi Max advertisement from last year with Kyrie Irving. The series of advertisements is named after the character Kyrie Irving plays in the commercials, Uncle Drew. For the video, Irving is dressed up and wearing makeup that make him look like a sixty year old man instead of an NBA all-star point guard. Uncle Drew then goes to a park to watch his “nephew” and his friends play a pick-up game of basketball. When one of the players gets hurt, the nephew says Uncle Drew can still play and invited him out on the court. It’s obvious the nephew knows what’s going on and the person who got “hurt” probably does too but all of the other players really think Uncle Drew is an old man. At first Uncle Drew can barely get up and down the court and his shots are nowhere close to going in. By the end of the video Uncle Drew is crossing over defenders, draining threes, and throwing alley-oops to himself of the backboard.

The humor in this video lies in the fact that the other players have no idea who Uncle Drew really is. Initially they’re entertained by how bad he is and that he is actually trying to play at that age. Their reactions slowly change and they are beyond confused about what is going on. Another aspect that makes this video funny is the incongruity between Uncle Drew’s age ad his basketball skill. Ordinarily we would expect an old man to not be athletic so we are amused when we see Uncle Drew dunking.  

One key to the video is how well Irving pulls of his role. He walks and talks just like we would expect a person that age to and he really makes the whole video believable and hilarious.