Even Madonna’s halftime extravaganza faces harsh Super Bowl audience

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Updated: March 8, 2012 8:09AM

Doing a Super Bowl halftime show is the most thankless showbiz job this side of hosting the Oscars. No matter what you do, half the audience is going to say you crushed it while the other half will claim you just delivered the worst performance known to humankind.

If Jesus had shown up at Super Bowl XLVI and had changed all the sideline Gatorade into a fine Pinot Noir and had taken five hot dogs and a couple of buns and fed the multitudes, some critics would have howled, “Can’t believe Jesus trotted out the same old hits. When is he going to come up with some NEW miracles?!”

Strike a pose

So it was with Madonna’s halftime extravaganza last Sunday. She kicked things off with gladiators and “Vogue,” welcomed guest performers LMFAO, Cee Lo, Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. (who flipped the bird on live TV, with civilization somehow surviving that “shocking” moment), performed elaborately choreographed numbers on an eye-popping stage — and disappeared through a trap door in a puff of white smoke as lights on the field spelled out “WORLD PEACE.”

Borderline self-parody at times? Absolutely. Was there lip-synching and/or vocal tracks augmenting Madonna’s vocals? Sure seemed that way.

But it was also entertaining as hell, as the 53-year-old Madge reminded us why she’s been a pop culture icon for three decades. How many of today’s iTunes chart-toppers who are in their early 20s will be asked to perform in the Super Bowls of the 2040s?

Doesn’t matter if you’re the Black Eyed Peas, The Who, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Prince, the Rolling Stones or Paul McCartney — you’re going to get criticized.

Play your hits and you’ll be lambasted for your predictability. Insert a new song and they’ll say, “Like anybody cares about that.” Try to jazz it up with a cover tune or an intriguing guest appearance or a new arrangement of a classic tune and you’ll be chided for trying too hard.

Plus everyone will note how old you look, as if they’ve somehow figured out how to stop the aging process and you haven’t.

How short the memory. The Twit-ics forget or perhaps simply don’t know that the first 25 or so Super Bowl halftime shows ranged from underwhelming to WTF.

In 1991, New Kids on the Block shared the halftime stage with various Disney characters. In 1989, the superstar attraction was none other than Elvis Presto — that’s right, an Elvis impersonator.

The infamously bland Up With People (“Up, up with people, you meet ’em wherever you go, up, up with people, they’re the best kind of folks we know!”) performed at a number of Super Bowl halftimes. Carol Channing did two Super Bowls.

The halftime entertainment for Super Bowl VIII was the University of Texas Marching Band, with Miss Texas Judy Mallett on fiddle.

I guarantee you nobody was speculating about the University of Michigan Marching Band’s set list in 1973, or ripping the Tyler Apache Belles Drill team, Pete Fountain and Al Hirt for their performances at Super Bowl XII.

Higher and higher expectations

Just as the Super Bowl commercials inevitably feature animals acting like humans, unfunny babies, gorgeous women who can’t act and familiar faces in hit-and-miss comedic bits, the Super Bowl halftime show never lives up to the hype.

But if you go back to Up With People or marching bands now, there’ll be a revolution. So nearly every year, the Super Bowl invites another legendary Boomer pop or rock act to perform, and nearly every year the show gets louder and brighter and more ambitious — and half the folks watching say it sucked.

Maybe next year we’ll get the Pope performing a quick Mass, U2 performing with Lady Gaga, a three-round MMA championship fight, the cast of “Jersey Shore” setting themselves on fire and some live open-heart surgery.

In 3-D.