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Watch And Relive Madonna’s Bleacher-Slipping, Cee Lo-Loving, Spartacussing Half-Time Spectacle

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Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 02/05/2012 at 8:47 PM Reviews

The Popdust Files: madonna, super bowl, wtf

It’s here: the moment millions of confused football fans, newfound Super Bowl demographics and penny-slinging campaign participants have waited for. Who, out of Madonna, LMFAO, M.I.A., Nicki Minaj, Cee Lo(!) and the rest, has the most to gain or be mocked for? Will it clear the bar set by last year’s Black Eyed Peas performance, a bar that is five feet underground? Will it meet our much higher bar? Will there be gladiator gymnasts? The answers, and the videos, for all these are below.

VOGUE

Here is something that played out at least three dozen times during rehearsal:

Backup Spartan No. 64: Hey, Backup Dancer No. 78!
Backup Spartan No. 78: (grunting, shifting Throne Pylon No. 15) What?
Backup Spartan No. 64: WATCH THE THRONE!

But they’d be apt as well as annoying for this zillion-screened, gold-plated DONDA gonzo staging of Spartacus where the gladiators actually dance for the “Gene Kelly / Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers, dance on air” bit. Madonna is the Diva Imperia at the center of it all, tossing golden apples of discord into Twitter and not even attempting to hide the fact that she is lip-synching. 4 bolts

MUSIC/PARTY ROCK ANTHEM/SEXY AND I KNOW IT (YEAH, IT WAS KINDA LIKE THAT):

The one fated to be forever pulped by the news as The One In Which Madonna Fell Off The Bleachers, which is probably for the best, because it’s also the one in which moon-suited dancers tumbled down the same, not to mention the one in which LMFAO drove a two-ton truck of zebra-suited party rock into Madonna’s show as she pantomimed trying to kick SkyBlu in the face, then eventually succumbed to shuffling and singing “…I’m sexy and I know it,” sounding more robotic than any pop star has ever sounded for the past 20 years. You will rewatch at least five clips from this if you ever patronize stan battlefields. But hey, those synths still squelch. 2 bolts

GIVE ME ALL YOUR LUVIN’

I can’t help but think this black-clad rebel cheerleader shtick is at least 20 years too under-developed for Madonna. This is some fifth-sequel-to-Bring It On staging, even if we accept that we’re at a football game and darn it, what’s more all-American-bro than cheerleading routine? M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj make the most of relegation, the former flipping off the camera and the latter spitting while standing atop what you are not going to tell me isn’t the Shufflebot’s severed head. There is a dubstep breakdown that breaks everyone. Not even that can ruin the song. 4.5 bolts

OPEN YOUR HEART/EXPRESS YOURSELF/LIKE A PRAYER:

CEE LO! Cee Lo doing the entirety of The Immaculate Collection is something I would shill for endlessly. Anyway, Madge hands these performances off to Lo and to Twitter’s Illuminati-choir jokes, except for one final plaintive “life is a mystery…” and she disappears in a cloud of smoke and a large WORLD PEACE staging. What does it mean? It means Cee Lo. 3.5 bolts

POPDUST AVERAGE: This performance was an incoherent, style-for-style’s sake disaster that only differs from last yea’rs Black Eyed Peas laser spew in strength of back catalogue, star power and classicity of tunes. The other way to interpret this: not a second was boring.

Rating: 4.8/5 (4 votes cast)