World: Analysis - Birth of the male klutz cannot overshadow sublime film ads.

Stupid men aside, the Film jury at Cannes had much to applaud.

We viewed 6,081 ads and what a load of balls they were. Basketballs, baseballs, ten-pin bowling balls, rugby balls, but mostly footballs. They say advertising is an amplified echo of society; the roar of the European Championships came through loud and clear. Anyone who submitted footie ads for Cannes 2004 played a tough game.

When it wasn't balls, it seemed to be blokes running. Across rooftops, down fire escapes, over sand dunes, through football stadia, past shiny windows - often not making it clear where they're running to or from or why. But then, non-narrative ads are easier to cut down to shorter time lengths to suit today's tightened media budgets.

Another sign of our pressured times was the rarity of animated ads, presumably because clients no longer have the schedules to allow us to work with all the brilliant animators out there. Yet the Unif Green Tea 'worm' and the Evian 'waterboy' ads were among the easiest golds to decide. (Perhaps work like this, with its moment-by-moment delivery of telling detail, will one day save the industry from channel-zapping and TiVo.)

Dazed after seeing so many ads, it occurs that there have been a lot showing men being stupid (and that's ignoring the Oriental and European ads featuring George W Bush singing, tap-dancing, wearing grass skirts and even speaking). It's as though we're witnessing the birth of an ad klutz stereotype who takes everything in the neck the way cartoon characters used to.

Watch out for him: he's from the UK school of yobs-and-slobs ads but graduated from the US academy of gross-out teen films. No plate glass window, no barbeque, no ...