One of the many services we provide here at IMVDb is telling you when someone who doesn't usually participate in music videos is in a music video. Trust us, if you want to impress people at a party, nothing does the trick like "you know that guy/girl was in a music video". (Actually, don't do this - we tried and nobody likes it.)
For instance, Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock fame has been all over the place with his Barnes & Noble commercials this holiday season. Did you know he was also in a music video? With Mariah Carey? Let's check it out - 2008's "Touch My Body", directed by Brett Ratner.
"Touch My Body" is a sexy song about touching Mariah Carey's body. It could have easily had a serious, sexy video to accompany it, but there are already so many straight, sexy Mariah Carey videos - do we really need one more? Don't answer that.
Brett Ratner seems to have realized this and decided to go the comedy route, casting McBrayer in the role of a computer tech from "Compu Nerd" (a parody of Best Buy's Geek Squad). He comes to Mariah Carey's mansion, and lucky for us Carey is in lingerie and a house coat. He brings him up to her room to look at her computer. (Sidenote: do you think Mariah Carey really uses Geek Squad? I hope so.)
Then Jack goes into a dream. He dreams that him and Mariah are best friends and lovers, doing nerdy things like playing laser tag, guitar hero, and racing mini cars on a mini track. They also walk a unicorn around with McBrayer dressed as a king. This is a fantasy, of course, and eventually Mariah wakes McBrayer up and asks him if he updated to 802.11n (802.11n is a wifi spec and he obviously didn't do it).
A few things really work for me in this video. One of them is McBrayer, of course, who carries the video and brings a lot more believability and likability to the stock "nerd" character. This video could have been painful with a classic "nerd" guy hamming it up, but McBrayer knows better than to fall into that trap.
The other is Carey, who acts exactly how I'd expect her to act when dealing with someone who is there to service her computer/home wifi. She doesn't ham it up, and her line about 802.11n is not so esoteric as to be completely implausible that she'd know what that is.
Also, does anyone know where I can get Oreo pajamas like the ones McBrayer is wearing when Carey is feeding him stuff out of the fridge? It's for a friend.
