The new John Lewis ad is certainly a tear-jerker, and this time it wrings the tears out of viewers by taking on the ‘crisis in men’, seeking to portray isolating males even within the confines of a family.
A teenage son leaves a present for his father under the tree, and leaves the room out of embarrassment when the old man starts to open it. It turns out to be a vinyl record of Where Love Lives, a 90s club classic which has great meaning for the father, who is immediately transported to a fantasy/flashback nightclub where he - cringe alert - becomes lost in music. But then he sees his teenage son across the nightclub. Dad beckons him over, and as he comes closer he changes into a little boy again, then a baby, all the years of hugs and kisses flooding back in the moment. Back in the real world, the teenage son enters the room and the father embraces him, weeping, the awkward masculine wall that has grown between them, shattered.
