Why’s the John Lewis’ Xmas Ad so bloody menacing!

[Purplefoo]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/04/john-lewis-christmas-advert-countdown-90s-club-classic-where-love-lives

I genuinely thought it was about an abusive dad or a murderous son at first! So intense……

I think this is it. Some people see the positives more than the negatives whether that be because of life experiences or because of their general outlook. Personally, I love it.

I love it, made me cry. Took me right back to the 90’s.

This. I didn't receive it negatively or menacing at all!

I took it to be a teenage boy who wanted to get their dad something special, embarrassed or nervous about it maybe, and a dad who just had a whole flood of memories come back to him, brought on by his son's thoughtfulness.

What Christmas is all about surely?!

Yeh, it's too too much - a relatable difficulty in connecting with your teen son story would have been great... but this one looks like it's hiding layers of repressed rage and a murder or two... it's just overdone.

You only need to read threads here to see how many miserable families there are, living with abuse, often minimising and excusing it and the kids are stuck in the middle of the shit, utterly powerless. Christmas Day on here is full of threads about men ruining Xmas with their moods, lack of effort, silent treatment, sulking etc. The family in the advert look miserable, the children look on edge and very uncomfortable. I really didn’t like it, it made me feel quite uneasy.

My mum would put a positive spin on the advert, but her standards for men and fathers are on the floor. I’d call it minimising moody arse men who don’t bother to build a good relationship with their children, rather than seeing the positive.

Same! I like the way they went from the original Alison Limerick into the Labrynth cover too. At no point did I think the son was dead... thats a weird take imo! He's back in the club remembering being young and fun hearing the record, then he is pulled back into the present seeing his son, remembering all the moments that have happened since. Completely relatable to me!

I personally hate the sickly schmaltzy ads. I love this. But it's probably been made by someone relatively similar to me. I can see from this thread that it's not going to be one of their more popular ones!

Me neither. But the ad did it's job because I went online and looked. Thought the prices were better than a well known high street shop that sells vinyls. I actually ordered one, rather than where I was originally going to buy it from!

Same here!

This thread is bonkers. 😂 It’s a gorgeous advert. I love it. So do my friends on various WhatsApp groups. So did the 25 Yr 11s in my Media class today. They totally got it.

I just watched it again to see if I could remotely see any of the negativity, and cried all over again. I'm peri menopausal though, but I love it, it's such a brilliant ad.

It looked to me like the son was just anxious in case his dad didn’t like the gift 🤷‍♀️

exactly!

@Lavender1974

I think most would ‘get it’. The question is do they think it’s normal for family life, because if they do that is really sad.

I don't like schmaltzy Christmas ads either, but there are lots of other ways they could have done it - used a bit of humour or put some reason to explain why everyone seems a bit tense at the beginning. Or why there's that really weird thing of leaving one present under the tree and not mentioning it - wtf?
Some people are saying it's wilful misinterpretation, but we are all used to seeing visual tropes in films and TV and making predictions about what will happen next. So that bit where he stopped clubbing and saw his son and the music slows down and everything fades around them to black, of course loads of people think 'something really bad is going to happen' because usually that is exactly what happens with that sort of imagery.
And when the boy and his dad hug, the first thing that sprang to mind for me was that it didn't look like an 'I'm really touched by that present' hug but as someone else said, that it looked like two people comforting each other after a bereavement! Then finally at the very very end of the ad it eventually lightens up with the boy giving a bit of a sheepish smile and the dad doing a bit of crap dancing.
It didn't shout 'grumpy father makes everyone walk on eggshells all the time' to me (though I can see why other people thought so), I just thought it was a bit shit.

I loved it and it made me cry. Great song too.

But I hate all the shit adverts like Kevin the fucking carrot and trolls running around stealing people’s Christmas dinners.

Just spent some time going through all the comments on Instagram. Maybe they’ve deleted any bad ones but everyone on there (mainly parents of teens and Gen X ravers) absolutely love it.

😂 well said

Thought it was naff tbh. I didn’t get the point of it.

You’re living proof that the ad works. It’s done exactly what it’s intended to.

Well no matter what anyone is thinking about the ad It's not giving me shop at John Lewis vibes which let's be fair that's what John Lewis wants you to do. So to me it's missed it's mark. The Boots ad is much better and I expect the Aldi carrot will be very Christmassy.

It’s so bloody deep and meaningful.

Give me woodland animals bouncing on a trampoline any day!

Yep, I thought the son was dead.

But is the Rough Trade concession permanent? It's only been there since February apparently (and not in every branch it seems).
Did JL sell vinyl before that in the last few years? Will they be selling it in six months time?
That's the thing with department stores. They sell so much variety so any advertising really needs to be clear on what they actually sell.

I mean, if you need to look for signs of living proof an advert is working then it doesn't bode well.