Best Sketches: SNL Season 35 (so far)

Brian was mentioning to me the other day that he doesn't think he'll watch SNL live anymore, since you can watch the whole thing on Hulu the next day anyway (for the time being), and skip all the lousy sketches. I'll admit that you'd miss a lot of dreck - particularly this season, so far - but I'll keep watching live (or, on 30 minute delay so I can fast-forward the commercials), because it's so much more enjoyable when you discover moments like these for yourself. Plus, because of music rights, you would never have seen the Gerard Butler open at all.

5. Flight Announcement

The lone bright spot in an otherwise very forgettable season opener, this ended up being roughly the only sketch involving Megan Fox that wasn't based on the concept "ooh, Megan Fox is so hot." Which, while true, is also not particularly funny.

4. Gerard Butler Monologue

As Butler puts it "as an actor, I'm known for two kinds of film roles - ones where I take my shirt off, and ones where I don't." His oddly funny "Music Of The Night" solo goes everywhere you'd expect it to, but remains spot-on the whole way through. It also serves to remind us how truly awful The Phantom Of The Opera was. Has any movie aged as poorly in the past five years?

3. "On The Ground"

The only amusing digital short this year, Samberg ramps the sketch up exactly as he should - starting in the vaguely sane and ending in the ridiculous.

2. Ladies Billiards

SNL never does classic sketches like this anymore, with a straight-man vs. comedic foil structure and fast-paced patter. It feels for all the world like an old Abbott and Costello sketch, if Abbott and Costello felt comfortable talking about lady business.

1. What's Up With That?

A perfect sketch because, 60 seconds in, the viewer says to himself "this isn't going anywhere good," and tunes out - and then slowly tunes in again as they realize "hey - this is really, really funny."

 

And, the number one reason to watch SNL live? Moments like this. I recall leaping from the couch and grabbing the remote to rewind the footage. "That did not just happen!"

1A. The Jenny Slate F-Bomb

When This Comes Out, You Will Buy This. You Will.

Ten or fifteen years from now, you'll be watching a daytime TV show for some reason. Maybe you're home sick, maybe you've got the day off, maybe you're just killing time in a waiting room somewhere. During the commercial breaks, an ad will come on for a 90's music collection - it'll be called "Remember The 90's" or "This Is The 90's" or something explanatory. It won't be the 2-minute infomercial for the Time-Warner 100-song collection; no, it'll be the 30-second spot for the one-disc collection, available at Wal-Mart's everywhere. They'll play you clips of four or five of the music videos, and all of the songs will scroll from the bottom of the screen to the top.

And here's the thing: where ever you are, whether in the privacy of your own house or an extremely public place, you will find yourself singing quietly along with the songs. You won't be able to help yourself. It'll strike something primeval in you, and that'll just be it. And then, without even fully realizing what you're doing, you'll buy the CD (or whatever form of music collection we have then). You'll be at Wal-Mart, or on iTunes, or where ever it is that we go then, and you'll see it, and even though you have no need to buy what amounts to a poorly-assembled mixtape, you will purchase it anyway. The power of nostalgia is that strong.

Jonathan and I had a long phone call today to hash out what, exactly, the track listing of that album would be. Here's what we came up with:

  1. Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind (1997)
  2. Only Wanna Be With You - Hootie & The Blowfish (1995)
  3. Truly Madly Deeply, Savage Garden (1998)
  4. Mmmbop, Hanson (1996)
  5. Iris, Goo Goo Dolls (1998)
  6. Don't Speak, No Doubt (1996)
  7. Wannabe, Spice Girls (1997)
  8. 3 AM, Matchbox Twenty (1996)
  9. All-Star, Smashmouth (1999)
  10. Ironic, Alanis Morissette (1996)
  11. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, Aerosmith (1998)
  12. Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana (1992)
  13. Baby One More Time, Britney Spears (1998)
  14. Mr. Jones, Counting Crows (1994)
  15. Torn, Natalie Imbruglia (1998)
  16. Under The Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1992)
  17. My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion (1998)
  18. You Were Meant For Me - Jewel (1997)
  19. One, U2 (1992)

We used a lot of different criteria to judge each of these songs - is the song big enough that we'll remember it 20 years later? Was the band big enough that we'll still remember who they were? Is the song indicative of the 90's or did it simply happen to have been made during that period? And would anyone look at the song and ask themselves "why is this on here and not...?"

I learned a couple things:

1. The late 90's (1998 in particular) was - in addition to being a great stretch for films - also a period that turned out a number of gigantic hits. It turns out I was in middle school at exactly the right time (literally the only thing about middle school that went exactly right).

2. There are a number of artists that were huge during the 90's without having any one song to point to as their definitive hit. Both Mariah Carey and Boys II Men are great examples.

3. Pop music during the 90's has a very specific narrative to it. 80's music continued until about 1992 and ended upon the release of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Grunge held sway for two years until a more poppy, musically diverse, bar band sound took over in about 1994 - Hootie and The Blowfish led the way, followed by artists like The Gin Blossoms, Toad The Wet Sprocket, etc. That R.E.M. had a resurgence during this period is not surprising. That stretch held until 1996, when pop singers wrestled Top 40 back from alternative rock, and we saw a short stretch where girl groups like the Spice Girls and Hanson (oh, they count) conquered the world. Then, acoustic-based artists surged back to the forefront - Jewel, Dave Matthews, Alanis Morissette and so on. By 1998, though, we had our first wave of the ingenues - Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, plus artists like 'NSync, The Backstreet Boys - a lot of bright, bubblegum pop. That sound took us into the 2000s, and didn't really disappear until the rise of Eminem and rap-rock usurped it.

4. I had to leave a lot of songs out. Maybe too many. And there's a distinct possibility I picked some of the wrong ones. Which one of these would you say should not have been left out? And what would you pull out to replace it?

Kiss From A Rose, Seal
The Sign, Ace Of Base
Hero, Mariah Carey
Smooth, Santana featuring Rob Thomas
I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston
Waterfalls, TLC
One Week, Barenaked Ladies
Walkin’ On The Sun, Smash Mouth
When I Come Around, Green Day
Gettin' Jiggy Wit It, Will Smith
Tubthumping, Chumbawamba
Breakfast At Tiffany's, Deep Blue Something
Walking In Memphis, Marc Cohen 
Quit Playing Games, Backstreet Boys
Wonderwall, Oasis

The 21st Best Movie I’ve Seen This Year

#21 Funny People

 I almost don’t want to comment on this movie because, since I saw this movie in theaters, I’ve been trying to remove it from my memory entirely.

Now, this movie is not that bad. But it’s not good, and it’s frustratingly not good, as what seems to be a good premise is combined with standout performances from both Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen into a movie that is somehow completely lousy at accomplishing any of the goals it sets out for itself.

I’ve been as stalwart a supporter of Judd Apatow as there’s been in the past few years, for several reasons:

A. His good movies – both movies he’s produced (Anchorman, Superbad) and directed (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) are hilarious and incredibly rewatchable. If you were to list the Ten Best Comedies of the Last Ten Years, that list would include at least four Judd Apatow movies. In fact, let’s make that list (Apatow movies are marked with a *):

 

Best Comedies of the 2000s

  1.  Anchorman*
  2. Old School
  3. Shaun Of The Dead
  4. The 40 Year Old Virgin*
  5. Wedding Crashers
  6. Borat
  7. Napoleon Dynamite
  8. Superbad*
  9. Meet The Parents
  10. Talledega Nights*

I’m sure everyone’s got favorites in there, as well as ones that they hated and feel shouldn’t be on the list, but just below these movies would go:

   11.   Zoolander
   12.   The Hangover
   13.   Team America: World Police  
   14.   Tropic Thunder
   15.   School Of Rock
   16.   Knocked Up*
   17.   Dodgeball
   18.   Step Brothers*
   19.   Road Trip
   20.   Van Wilder

All good comedies, but all clearly a slightly lower tier than the aforementioned movies.  Either way, Apatow was involved in six of these 20 movies as either a director, writer, producer, or all three, and so he’s earned our good graces. I’m inclined to give him a pass.

B. Funny People was a failure of trying too hard, which is the sort of failure I appreciate. I hate sloppy filmmaking. I hate half-efforts, and poorly executed jokes. I hate seeing movies where the actors didn’t quite nail the bit, but the director moved on anyway. This movie was none of those things – everyone was clearly giving it their all, it just didn’t work out.

The problems with Funny People relate more to narrative momentum than anything else. No one in this movie is particularly likable – most noticeably Seth Rogen’s character, who really needs to be – and without anyone to root for, the whole movie just sits there, limply. There’s no interplay between a cold, closed-off Sandler and a warm, awkward Rogen, because the film makes them feel like they’re sort of the same person in different situations, which totally destroys the whole point of the movie. More damningly, Apatow forgets a key element of storytelling – he never creates a protagonist. Rogen and Sandler sort of share the protagonist’s load, each of them doing just enough to make you think the movie might be about them, and not quite enough where you don’t know which one you’re supposed to identify with.

People have knocked the film’s third act as the point where the movie derails. But the truth is that movie hadn’t actually built up enough speed to derail – it just chugs along, vaguely keeping our attention. The little engine that couldn’t. </train metaphor>

The problem is plot structure more than anything: Sandler’s efforts to win back his ex-girlfriend come too late in the story – almost two hours (!) into the movie. No one’s willing to start caring about a love story at that point in a film.

 This pains me to say, but in a more capable director’s hands, this could have been a much better movie. But Apatow invested too much of himself in the movie – his wife plays the love interest, his kids play the children, his ex-roommate (Sandler) is the protagonist (maybe), and it’s loaded with videocassette footage that Apatow himself had shot – of Sandler back in the day, of his child’s performance of CATS, etc. He can’t see the difference between what’s actually moving and what’s merely moving to him.

 If there’s a good way to fail, it’s this way: trying to go deeper, trying to make a comedy that’s more emotionally compelling than your average boner joke fare (though, wow, there are a lot of boner jokes in this movie). And that’s why I’m trying to pretend it never happened. Apatow’s earned the right to have us dwell on his successes rather than failures.

 

For now.