The advert has a strong, clear message this year – not all teenage boys are menaces to society
Whatever we expected from this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, not many people will have anticipated a pointed riposte to Netflix’s Emmy-bedecked Adolescence and its portrayal of teenage boys as moody psychopaths raised on Andrew Tate and Reddit.
Yet that is the message delivered by the tinsel-strewn marketing missile. The ad goes out on a limb by standing up for a section of society that has become an all-too-tempting punchbag. The kids are all right, is the quietly controversial message; you don’t need to cross the road when you see them coming.
In the ad, a grumpy teen bonds with his ageing Ibiza dad over a house banger from ye olden times (the early 90s). Neither are much use at expressing emotion. But fortunately, Alison Limerick’s 1990 belter, “Where Love Lives” – subtly covered by Labrinth – is on hand to fill the gap between what they’d like to say to each other and the feelings they are capable of expressing.
On Christmas morning, we see the starring teenager zoned out behind his headphones. He is unsure of himself in contrast to his more self-assured sister, and he lacks the confidence to give his dad the present he has bought: a copy of the aforementioned “Where Love Lives”.
His dad is all over the place, too, incapable of expressing emotions beyond the performative clowning we expect of modern fathers. And yet his love for his son is unlocked when he slaps the tune on and is whisked back to his carefree youth, raving on a grimy dance-floor.
Those were good days, but nowhere near as important as his years raising his kid. This is the part of the ad precision-tooled to have you blubbing like a toddler who’s just seen their favourite toy run over by a bin lorry. Well done if you make it through without the waterworks flowing like the Ganges in monsoon season.
As is the tradition with John Lewis’s Christmas ads, it expertly walks the line between sweet and cloying, and is ruthlessly engineered to reduce you to a big quivering mess of tears and plaintive honking noises.
When it comes to Christmas advertising, it is important to maintain a healthy scepticism. These commercials are ultimately about separating you from the contents of your wallet – nothing else matters. That said, the ad is a welcome counterpoint to the demonisation of teenage boys in Adolescence.
Acclaimed as important television and a conversation starter, the Netflix series, released in March, earned 15-year-old Owen Cooper an Emmy, making him the youngest male actor to ever scoop the accolade. He won it for playing a homicidal secondary school pupil whose brain has been infiltrated by the manosphere – the toxic online community that tells men and boys that women are not people but playthings for their amusement.
Adolescence was excellent, and its warning about the toxicity of male influencers was timely – it remains the greatest advert ever for getting your kids off TikTok. However, every teenage boy portrayed on screen was dysfunctional to some degree, and the hysterical message was that they were all potential incels. In the case of Cooper’s character, there was also something incredibly creepy about its projection of a thwarted and violent sexuality onto an actual child.
Odd though it may sound, the new John Lewis ad delivers a much more accurate portrayal of kids that age.
It isn’t just Adolescence that has been down on teenage boys. Whether it’s school dramas such as Ackley Bridge or broad comedies such as The Inbetweeners (rumoured to be returning in some shape or form in 2026), the stereotype is that young men are hormonal thrill-seekers who must be corralled until they grow up and develop some common sense. But in fact, many teenage boys are much like the one we meet in the new ad – glum, insecure and full of emotions they lack the maturity or self-belief to express.
It’s easy to be cynical about the John Lewis ad. Each November, this staple of the advertising industry seems to become more efficient at hacking our feelings and making us cough up tears on demand.
But this year’s offering does have something to say beyond the usual call to spend more money. It pushes back against the caricature of teenage boys as a menace to society and is a reminder that not every adolescent boy is a horror movie waiting to happen.
