An actual scene from the Samsung Galaxy S4 preview.
After watching last night’s preview of the Samsung Galaxy S4, my first thought was “Well, that was weird”. Held in New York’s legendary Radio City Music Hall, they couldn’t resist going Broadway with really corny and overacted skits in which the features of their upcoming flagship phone were demonstrated. It had everything you’d expect from a matinee performance of Guys and Dolls that you’d expect from a touring company performing at a community theatre in some small midwestern town: orchestral segues built on a recurring leitmotif (in this case, the “Samsong” — the familiar tune that Samsung uses as its default ring), an annoying child actor, hammy over-emoted performances from everyone onstage, jokes bad enough to make you groan out load (including a number of just-sexist-enough ones) and believe or not, an actual tap-dancing number.
The entire thing was overseen by Broadway actor Will Chase, who seemed to be doing his level best to channel the spirit of actor-turned-“I’ll promote anything”-pitchman Troy McClure from The Simpsons, right down to the I-can’t-tell-if-he’s-being-ironic-or-not delivery.
If you missed the presentation or for some masochistic reason, want to go through it all over again, Samsung have seen fit to share all fifty-odd cheese-tastic minutes of it on YouTube:
All it needed for it to be completely over-the-top surreal would be appearances by Big Bird and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Too bad Qualcomm already had that idea: