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Are Logan Couture and Joe Pavelski better actors in English or French?

San Jose Sharks forwards Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture starred alongside Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron in an ad campaign for Visa and Air Canada, and showed off their language skills in the process.

Pavelski and Couture spoke English and French in a pair of ads, as Bergeron ditches the pair to avoid their squabbling. In the English version, the Sharks argue over whether Canadians are better at hockey than Americans.

Thanks to my one semester learning French in college and Google translate, I can tell you that the French version features Pavelski and Couture arguing about…Pavelski’s French!

Like a director’s cut paired with the theatrical cut on a blu-ray release, there are some subtle differences worth noting. In the French ad, there’s another character (the driver), and Pavelski and Couture are sitting in 20A and 20C, not row 22. After hearing Pavelski say “se pauvre” like a Cheesehead over-pronouncing “Brett Favre,” I don’t blame whoever decided the pair should sit in 20 instead of 22. Yet somehow, Pavelski and Couture’s acting in the French version is arguably better than in the English one, where their performances are wooden they make the acting in The Room look dynamic.

Still, Couture’s come a long way as an actor since appearing in a pair of Upper Deck videos in 2009. He didn’t break, either, which is an improvement over his performance in a series of “Carpool Confessions” with NBC Sports Bay Area’s Dave Feldman and Ahmed Fareed.

The English ad also features Morgan Freeman narrating, meaning it’s much easier now to play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with Couture and Pavelski. The two, however, will probably not have their acting abilities with those of Freeman, a five-time Academy Award nominee, any time soon.

Which language are Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture better actors in?

French 58
English 48

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