Super Bowl LX aired four days ago. Since then, the internet has been dominated by Bad Bunny’s halftime show—the political debate, the FCC complaints, the takes about the takes. Ben Stiller himself jumped into the discourse, defending Bad Bunny against a congressman calling for an investigation. But now that the dust is starting to settle on all of that, it’s worth circling back to something that got buried under the noise: Stiller’s own 30 seconds of screen time.
Instacart’s “Bananas” aired during the first quarter of the game and featured Stiller and Benson Boone in matching Lycra jumpsuits, performing a retro disco-pop number about… how you like your bananas. That’s it. That’s the ad. And somehow, it might be one of the funniest commercials to air during a Super Bowl in years.
What Actually Happens in 30 Seconds (and the 2 Minutes You Need to See)
Stiller and Boone play Gary and Johnny, a fictional European disco-pop duo—think ABBA meets Daft Punk with a grocery budget—belting out an earworm about choosing bananas through Instacart. Directed by Spike Jonze and shot on vintage tube cameras, the whole thing has a warm, grainy, intentionally dated look.
Then comes the moment. Johnny (Boone) does his signature backflip mid-performance. Gary (Stiller), visibly jealous, decides he can do one too. He climbs the scaffolding. He launches himself. And he absolutely eats it—crashing into the stairs and taking out the drummer on the way down.
The Super Bowl cut ends there. But the extended version on YouTube is where the ad becomes something special. Gary doesn’t give up. He gets back up, insists he needs “more lift,” and despite Johnny begging him to stop—“Gary, come down. It is okay. Nobody wants you to do the flip”—he tries again. His reasoning? “We do a flip and make Papa happy.” Johnny’s response: “Don’t bring him into this.” It’s Stiller at his absolute best: a man whose delusion is so total, so sincere, that you can’t look away.
The Comedy Formula That Has No Business Working This Well
Most Super Bowl ads try so hard to be funny that they loop back around to painfully unfunny. The joke arrives pre-packaged, pre-tested, and dead on arrival.
“Bananas” works because it’s built on a real comic engine. Stiller’s entire career is characters who take themselves way too seriously—Zoolander, White Goodman in Dodgeball, the guy from Along Came Polly who cannot stop sweating. His superpower is playing men whose confidence wildly exceeds their ability. Gary is the purest distillation of that archetype: a man who watches a 22-year-old pop star do a backflip, thinks “I can do that,” and then nearly kills himself proving he can’t. Twice.
The casting is quietly genius. Boone is 22, athletic, one of the fastest-rising pop stars in the world—everything Gary wants to be. The generational contrast is the joke, and they don’t have to say a word about it. And Spike Jonze might be the only director alive who could make a grocery delivery commercial feel like a lost music video from 1979.
But Does Being Funny Actually Sell Bananas?
The ad industry is already split. Some creatives say viewers remember Stiller falling but forget what Instacart actually does. Others argue the earworm is so sticky that the product feature—a “Preference Picker” for choosing banana ripeness—sneaks into your consciousness the more it loops.
History suggests the second camp is right. The Budweiser frogs. Terry Tate: Office Linebacker. Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” All funny first, product second. All had critics saying the brand message was unclear. All became cultural moments. The funniest Super Bowl ads don’t sell you in the moment. They make you want to be part of the conversation. And in 2026, the conversation is the product.
What Instacart Might Have Just Figured Out
This Instacart commercial regarding keeping your bananas from bruising was by far the best ad during the SuperBowl game. Absolutely brilliant and add Benson Boone and Ben Stiller comedy spin was the cherry on top. pic.twitter.com/hSKN75Q0uB
— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) February 9, 2026
Last year, Instacart’s first Super Bowl ad was a safe nostalgia play with the Kool-Aid Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy. This year: absurd musical comedy directed by Spike Jonze, with a two-and-a-half-minute extended cut that builds out an entire world around two characters. That shift tells a story. Instacart isn’t explaining what it does anymore—they’re trying to make people feel something about the brand. In a market where every competitor fights over convenience, speed, and price, an emotional edge might be the only differentiator left.
So, Is It the Funniest Super Bowl Ad Ever?
Is “Bananas” the funniest Super Bowl ad ever made? Maybe not. But it’s in the conversation, and in 2026, being in the conversation is the whole game. It’s the kind of ad that doesn’t just air and disappear—it lives on timelines, in group chats, in the earworm nobody can shake. Instacart spent its 30 seconds making people laugh instead of making them think, and that might be the smartest thing any brand did on Sunday.
And if you haven’t watched the extended cut yet: Gary needs more lift.
