Kobi Marimi makes fun of Eurovision loss in new commercial
In a new commercial for Bank HaPoalim, Israel’s Eurovision contestant Kobi Marimi laughs about his 23rd-place finish.
By HANNAH BROWNKobi Marimi rehearses for the Eurovision at Expo Tel Aviv on Sunday.(photo credit: ANDRES PUTTING/EBU)
In a new commercial for Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s 2019 Eurovision contestant Kobi Marimi laughs about his 23rd-place finish.The clip opens with the young singer looking old and standing on a yacht, asking, “Do you remember me? Yes, yes, 2019,” with a cut to a moment from his Eurovision performance. “Kobi Marimi,” he continues, as he takes a cocktail from a passing waiter. “You must be thinking, ‘How could someone who got to 23rd place – and instead of a limousine went home on a scooter – manage to have such a beautiful lifestyle when he’s retired?’”He pauses to take off his robe and jump into a pool. “I didn’t make the same mistake again,” he continues, as he pets a thoroughbred horse in a stable filled with them. “I didn’t take the first song, excuse me, the first pension that they offered me,” a reference to critics who trashed the song he performed.“Instead, I got pension advice at Bank Hapoalim, and we picked the pension track that was best suited to me,” he says, as he chases a child in a moment copied from Marlon Brando’s last scene in The Godfather. Standing next to a white grand piano, he tells his accompanist: “And I have only one thing to tell them.” The scene shifts to a Eurovision-like stage as the still elderly Marimi sobs, “Thank you,” in English, an imitation of how he cried at the end of his emotional rendition of “Home” at the competition. He then says that he has also invested in a fleet of scooters.Marimi had a tough act to follow in the 2019 competition, since Netta Barzilai won the 2018 Eurovision contest with her rendition of the #MeToo-infused anthem, “Toy.”
