It certainly felt like the late ’80s this weekend at the box office. A re-adaptation of Pet Sematary (that felt more like a remake) and a superhero film with more than a few nods to Big together grossed more than $78 million. Can they ultimately match the $172 million that those films made? Or could Shazam!reach that number all by itself?
King of the Crop: Shazam! Could be the Ant-Man of the DCEU
(Photo by @ Warner Bros. Pictures)
DC’s Shazam! led the box office with $53.45 million this weekend, on top of the $3.3 million it earned in early preview screenings. That was higher than projections. Even though that is the lowest opening in the DC Extended Universe, knocking the film for that fact would be like giving Ant-Man a hard time for not living up to the numbers of Captain America or Iron Man. Shazam! is a different beast than the mostly darker offerings from the DCEU, something that critics appear to dig. Shazam! has scored a 91% on the Tomatometer, just shy of the 92% of Wonder Woman. That is also higher than two of the Christopher Nolan Batman films – Batman Beginsand The Dark Knight Rises – which are a universe apart from the current DC crop.
Shazam! now currently owns the ninth-best opening weekend ever in April; that will be knocked back to 10th on April 26 when Avengers: Endgame opens. Among the 10 films that had the biggest ever April openings, the low bar for ultimate totals has been set by Fast and Furious ($155 million) and 2010’s Clash of the Titans ($163.2 million). The two best multiples among April’s top 10 were earned by A Quiet Place (3.74 times its opening weekend) and 2016’s The Jungle Book (3.52). Their Tomatometer scores were both 95%. Audience word-of-mouth looks to be solid for Shazam!, which bodes well for its future. The R-rated Hellboy is unlikely to eat into the DC hit’s core audience, and if it can maintain a drop less than 45% it should be on track to earn at least $172 million, and potentially out-earn the original Ant-Man’s $180 million.
Rotten Returns: Best Of Enemies Struggles to Find Allies
(Photo by @ STX)
The Best of Enemiesopened with $4.5 million from 1,705 theaters, representing STX Entertainment’s seventh-lowest opening per-theater-average. Critics were mixed on the the movie – it has a 52% Tomatometer score – and audiences didn’t show up in impressive numbers. STX had a better month back in January with their Weinstein Co. pickup, The Upside, which remains one of the five highest-grossing films of the year with $107 million. That was the second-best tally (behind Bad Moms) for the studio in its nearly four-year history.
The Rest of the Top 10 and Beyond: Stephen King Continues to Draw Crowds, but Can Sematary Match the Original?
(Photo by Paramount Pictures)
A smart bit of counter-programming from Paramount Pictures saw the newest take on Stephen King’s Pet Sematary land in second place with $25 million, despite a less than stellar response from critics. The movie received glowing reviews after its premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival, but is now just barely Fresh with 61% on the Tomatometer. That is better than the reviews for Mary Lambert’s 1989 verion of Pet Sematary(48% with 31 reviews), but without strong word-of-mouth there may now be some doubt that the new movie can reach the $57.4 million that the original film made 30 years ago. (That is about $117 million in today’s dollars.)
There seems little hope that directors Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer’s version can match those inflation numbers off of a $25 million weekend. Among eight horror films that have opened between $22 million and $26 million, only The Visit and 2005’s The Amityville Horrormanaged to pass $57 million. (Each actually made $65.2 million.) Another two films – the 2013’s Evil Dead and 2015’s Poltergeist – appear to be more in line with audience response and dropped a respective 63.2% and 64.4% in their second weekends. Tune in next week to see which way Pet Sematary goes.
(Photo by @ Universal)
Meanwhile, another horror film is climbing the charts of the all-timers. Jordan Peele’s Us is now ahead of 2018’s Halloween after 17 days, with $152.3 million vs. the latter film’s $150.2 million total. That’s the second-highest ever for a horror film. It also bested Halloween’s third weekend ($13.8 million to $10.8 million). Pet Sematary took some viewers away from Us this weekend but more people will still be talking about Us next week as it continues to forge a path towards $200 million. Its international total is $216.5 million.
One film not headed to $200 million – at least not on the domestic front – is Tim Burton’s Dumbo. It is the 13th film from Disney released in over 3,000 theaters to drop 60% or more in its second weekend. With $76 million after 10 days that puts Dumbo behind 1999’s Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch, and Wild Hogs on the Disney charts. The film has made an additional $137.5 million internationally for a total of $213 million to date. It is going to need more than half-a-billion to break even.
Good thing that Captain Marvel’s numbers are still looking super. Its $374 million domestic take is the 19th highest gross ever after 31 days of release. And the $12.6 million it earned this weekend is the 21st best fifth weekend ever. It is now the 37th film to cross the $1 billion mark globally (and the seventh Marvel Cinematic Universe film to do so) and it continues to climb both of those charts. This weekend it also become the 30th highest-grossing film ever.
This Time Last Year: A Quiet Place Began Its Record-Breaking Run
(Photo by Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount)
John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place opened to $50.2 million, beginning its run towards becoming one of the biggest horror films of all time. The Universal comedy Blockers came in third with $20.5 million and the Ted Kennedy drama Chappaquiddick opened in seventh with $5.7 million. Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One was just two days away from passing $100 million domestically. That movie’s $24.6 million second weekend helped the top 10 films gross a total of $140.86 million with an average Tomatometer score of 60.9%. This year’s top 10 grossed an estimated $138.59 million and averaged 64.7% on the Tomatometer.
On the Vine: Hellboy Offers Darker Fare, Little Riffs on Big
(Photo by Eli Joshua Ade /@ Universal)
If Shazam! was too family-friendly for you and you cannot wait until Avengers: Endgame, then Lionsgate’s reboot of Hellboy with Stranger Things’ David Harbour might satisfy your hunger for R-rated comic-book fare. Once there was Tom Hanks in Big, now Universal presents Regina Hall in Little, a modern reversal in every respect that sprung from the mind of 14-year-old black-ishstar Marsai Martin. Laika Animation is back with its latest, Missing Link, and Aviron releases the adaptation of young adult novel, After. Then for one night only on Wednesday, April 10, you can see Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a film 21 years in the making.
The magic word at the box office this weekend was “Shazam!” Warner Bros.’ latest superhero adventure easily topped charts in North America, pocketing $53 million when it debuted in 4,217 venues.
Buoyed by positive reviews, “Shazam!” arrived ahead of expectations, which anticipated a start around $40 million to $45 million. The film also earned $3 million in advanced screenings for a domestic haul of $56 million. Overseas, “Shazam!” dominated with $102 million from 79 international markets, bringing its global start to $158.6 million.
While “Shazam!’s” domestic opening weekend is on the lower side for a traditional comic-book movie, it was less expensive to make compared to other superhero films. That means it doesn’t have to reach the same heights as entries like “Aquaman” and “Wonder Woman” to turn a profit. Warner Bros. and New Line spent $98 million to produce “Shazam!,” proving that studios can crank out a solid superhero installment without breaking the bank. Prior DC films like “Justice League” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” on the other hand, cost upward of $300 million before taking marketing and distribution into count.
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Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution, said this weekend’s “thrilling result” was because “Shazam!” doesn’t take itself too seriously. Though it’s still in the superhero genre, it feels lighter in tone than the influx of comic-book titles in theaters. “It was about having fun,” he said.
“‘Wonder Woman and ‘Aquaman’ were very dark and dramatic and different,” Goldstein added. “It shows we’re making a variety of different movies that can all live in the same space.”
“Shazam!” — described as “Big” set in the comic-book world — centers on Billy Baston (Asher Angel), a teenager who transforms into a bubble-gum-snapping superhero (Zachary Levi) when someone says the magic word. Both critics and fans praised the movie for its lighter take on the genre, compared to the apocalyptic storylines in comic-book adaptations. Males accounted for 57% of opening weekend audiences, while 45% of crowds were under the age of 25.
Though “Shazam!” led the way in North America, Paramount’s horror remake “Pet Sematary” also had a strong start, scaring up $25 million when it debuted in 3,585 locations. The supernatural thriller, based on Stephen King’s novel, cost $21 million to produce.
The final newcomer this weekend was “Best of Enemies,” starring Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell as a civil rights activist and a KKK leader forced to work together. It pulled in an underwhelming $4.5 million from 1,705 screens. Astute Films fully financed the film, which was distributed by STXfilms. Older moviegoers aren’t generally a demographic that rushes out to see a movie on opening weekend, so the studio anticipates that word-of-mouth about the feel-good drama will grow in the coming weeks, leading to a long life in theaters. Nearly 80% of moviegoers were over the age of 25, and 63% were female.
A number of holdovers filled out North American box office charts. In third place, Disney’s re-imaginging of “Dumbo” earned $18.2 million in its sophomore outing, marking a steep 60% drop from its debut. Directed by Tim Burton, the remake of Disney’s 1941 classic has surpassed $200 million globally, including $76 million in North America.
Universal and Jordan Peele’s “Us,” now in its third weekend of release, amassed another $13 million for a domestic haul of $152 million. The psychological thriller, starring Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke, hit $200 million in ticket sales worldwide.
Rounding out the top five is Disney’s “Captain Marvel,” adding $12.7 million. Starring Brie Larson, the superhero tentpole has crossed $1 billion in ticket sales, with $373 million of that bounty coming from North American theaters.
Among specialty releases, Neon’s Aretha Franklin documentary “Amazing Grace” made $57,353 from three theaters, averaging $19,118 per location. The non-fiction film, which was 46 years in the making, captures the Queen of Soul as she records her wildly successful album in a Baptist church.
Elsewhere, Amazon Studio’s released “Peterloo,” a historical drama about the deadly 1819 massacre in Manchester, in three locations. It pocketed $30,426 for a per-screen-average of $10,142.
This weekend continued to prove that scares and superheroes are some of the most reliable money-makers at the box office. Overall, ticket sales are still pacing around 16% behind last year, according to Comscore. That gap is shrinking as films like “Captain Marvel” and “Us” impress audiences, and Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame,” the studio’s epic conclusion that is expected to shatter records, could help close that margin even more.
CNN anchor Don Lemon announced his engagement to boyfriend Tim Malone on Saturday.
"He gave me a present on his birthday. How could I say no?" the anchor captioned the photo of their bowtie-shaped dog tags engraved with the words, "daddy will you marry papa?" The tags were on their puppies, Boomer and Barkley.
The photo posted on Lemon's Instagram also shows off the couple's rings.
Malone popped the question on his birthday Friday as the two were celebrating, Lemon said. Malone shared the same photo on his Instagram account, writing: "He said YES!"
Lemon and Malone, a real estate agent, met in New York a couple of years ago.
They shared an on-air kiss during a live broadcast CNN's New Year's Eve broadcast last year.
Lemon anchors "CNN Tonight with Don Lemon" that airs weeknights at 10 pm. He joined CNN in September 2006.
The live broadcast cut out as Zachary Madsen, 26, jumped into the ring and grabbed Hart, 61, the NYPD said in a statement.
Various WWE superstars rushed to pull the man off during the event held at New York's Barclay Center, according to CNN affiliate WLNY.
They included wrestling stars Shane McMahon, Xavier Woods, Tyson Kidd and Curtis Axel, as well as UFC heavyweight and husband to Ronda Rousey, Travis Browne.
Security held the man down until police arrived and arrested him, but Madsen reportedly caused the guard minor injuries, according to the station.
Madsen faces two counts of third-degree assault, criminal trespass, and one other misdemeanor charge, according to NYPD. It said Hart was not transported to the hospital and continued on with his speech.
Wrestlemania, WWE's biggest event of the year, will take place at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday night.
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [Silent Hill Colon Revelation 3D] star!”
In his monologue, Kit Harington took questions (since it was another one of those monologues) from Game Of Thrones co-stars Emilia Clarke, John Bradley, and real-life wife Rose Leslie. It was funny enough, as “let’s get this over with” Q&A monologues go, with the joke being that even his fellow cast members can’t remember how the series turns out, while Leslie worries that Harington’s Game Of Thrones success won’t carry over enough to support their Uber Eats lifestyle. (Harington, having joked gamely about some of his less thanGOT-lucrative roles, could only assure her that they’ll get by.) If there’s a criticism to be leveled at Harrington in his first hosting gig, it’s that it’d be more interesting if any of those three were hosting instead of the limited but up-for-anything Harington.
He wasn’t bad, really, and genuinely appeared to be into the experience, considering the number of times he put himself into some broadly exposed physical roles tonight. (For the Jon Snow enthusiasts out there—not one but two underpants sketches for you.) It’s just that, as far as sketch comedy goes, Harington isn’t exactly Mr. Versatility, adopting essentially the same tight, thin little voice for most of his roles. (Only in the final sketch of the night, when he gets to be comfortably British, does he feel anything like natural.) Still, Harington’s not an incapable comedy actor, just perhaps not the quick-change chameleon best suited for SNL hosting duty. And, unlike, say, Russell Crowe, his inaptitude for the gig was counterbalanced by an eagerness to please. Enthusiasm forgives a lot of sins.
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Best/Worst Sketch Of The Night
Game Of Thrones sketches were an inevitability, so here’s to SNL for at least packing all their so-so ideas into one omnibus piece. Since HBO has deployed its departing stars to America for the all-out PR blitz this struggling little show clearly needs (freeing up four of them to hang out at SNL tonight), the joke that the channel is planning to blanket their airways/fiber-optic-ways with all GOT programming all the time is a solid framing device for the grab-bag of mini-premises on display. They are, in order of cleverness: Arya as Daria; Jon Snow goes to Riverdale; the HBO Kids duo Dire Guys and Hodor’s House; the all-eunuch No Ballers; a Sam and Gilly CBS-style sitcom; snaps-fest Wildling Out; Cersei And The City; and The Marvelous Mrs. Melisandre. Topping them all was the kicker, with Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T, blessedly playing their SVU characters while unpacking a crime of Game Of Thrones-standard depravity. Points for “Executive Producer: Dire Wolf.”
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Now that that’s over with, this was the sort of writers’ show that made me wish for a more innately funny guy than Harington at its center. Eschewing repeaters, game shows, talk shows, news parodies, and nearly all of the tired SNL crutches, the show was largely premise-driven, which is deeply encouraging. Still, not that all the premises worked, or were free from some of the show’s other shaky comic underpinnings. The cruise ship sketch suffered from the worst structural damage, as SNL’s penchant for explaining the joke was in deadening overdrive. The central idea (a Michael Jackson cover band has quickly and ineptly rejiggered its repertoire into an all-Sinatra one in the wake of Escaping Neverland) needed someone more versatile than Harington as the lead, although Kenan, as usual, brought his signature underplayed charisma to the band’s newly rechristened Dean Martin funky bass player. But Beck Bennett, Heidi Gardner, and Leslie Jones started the sketch by calling out their objections to the switch, continued their objections to the switch, and fled after their objections had been heard, and objected to, by the band. A comedy sketch whose construction relies on straight-persons telling the audience how weird the premise is dulls whatever potential impact it’s got going for it, and SNL keeps on returning to it. (When Kate McKinnon pops out as an inexplicable Macaulay Culkin, her expert mugging is swept away by the trio loudly announcing that they recognize the reference, and calling out how inexplicable it is.) Still, it was at least ambitious to reveal that Leslie’s third wheel is butting in on two strangers at their table—until the sketch sputters out with Gardner and Bennett explaining that Leslie is a complete stranger to them.
For another instance of Harington’s gameness being unequal to his comedy chops, the bachelorette sketch saw Harington’s groom performing an ill-considered burlesque number for bride Cecily Strong and her friends. Harington did his damnedest, stripping to a frilly bodice, heels, and, eventually, pasties, before giving the audience its first glimpse of his underpants of the night. But if there’s anyone who could make lines like “Lookie lookie and you might see my cookie” work, well, he or she was not onstage for this one. That said, the sketch almost worked in the margins, with weird little touches creeping in at odd angles. Strong’s gratitude that both her high school friends and her real friends could make it elicited a dismayed little “Hey . . .” from Aidy Bryant’s high school friend. And the punchline that Melissa Villaseñor’s most enthusiastic bridesmaid turns out to be Harington’s sister gave Melissa a broad beat to play. But the highlight was Kate McKinnon’s French burlesque teacher, revealed smoking (with a second cigarette appearing for the biggest laugh), and claiming her role to be “teacher, prostitute, ghost,” which she claims are all essentially the same thing in France. She presumably also came up with Harrington’s burlesque character, “Eva Brawn.” Come for the impressive, if pasty, abs—stay for the weirdness.
The office sketch, where Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, and Harrington irritate their coworkers with cartoonishly non-stop LARP-ing nerdiness also suffered from the fact that Harrington crammed himself into another pinched little accent. For such a narrowly conceived character piece to work, having someone who could keep up with Mooney and Bennett’s signature focus in such things was sort of a necessity. Still, the piece got a bit better as it went along, as the three office irritants’ commitment to settling their dispute over employee of the month honors saw them dragging exhausted boss Mikey Day into the spell-slinging fray by producing some compromising photos. The idea that their blackmail is less malicious than product of their unwavering adherence to their shared chivalrous code gives the three an air of at least reflected nobility, and their shouts of “Duplication spell!” while whipping out endless copies of Day’s horrified boss jerking it in the stairwell has a loony energy to it. And since the employee prize is a single ice cream cone, here’s to the restraint shown in not making a “game of cones” joke. Which I just did. Dammit.
Speaking of commitment to weirdness, that the first sketch after the monologue was the nephew pageant was at least evidence of the show planting its freak flag early. Whatever misgivings I might have had about this being a simple Motherboy riff were swept away, as the sketch turned on the pageant’s delightfully skewed take on the nephew-aunt relationship. Harington (in his first odd little voice of the night as last year’s winner) presided over the contest along with his doting aunt Aidy Bryant, whose crooning about her “clever and fun” sibling’s son’s unremarkable achievements and observations (his neighbor’s Great Dane weighs the same as his dad) emerge in Aidy’s signature, specific intensity. The details make the sketch here, with that nebulous bond between aunt and nephew relishing in the sort of half-interesting details one might pick out of an infrequent familial phone call. (Teaching your aunt emojis, being scared of sports, wrecking your knee doing a backflip, getting $20 in the mail.) Taking off into welcome absurdity, the pageant also features a musical number extolling the lesser virtues of nieces and pets (“Nephews are gold, nieces are silver, and pets, they are the bronze,” sings Aidy’s Aunt Patty), and concludes with a delightfully weird turn by pageant judge Kenan who responds to Aidy’s request for the winner by repeating, unhelpfully, “The boy! The boy wins!” Again, not really a winner itself, the sketch was at least working on its own original wavelength.
Same goes for the VR video game filmed sketch, where Pete Davidson’s gamer gets baffled, then annoyed, by the in-game NPCs’ inter-squad interpersonal conflicts at the expense of just giving him his zombie-rifle already. Harington’s Damien and Day’s Ethan both keep gumming up the zombie-killing fun by pulling Davidson’s gamer aside to complain about the other, with Davidson’s exasperated button-mashing only taking things to a new level of the passive-aggressive, maddeningly non-violent dialogue tree. The sketch makes good use of its video game setting, with everyone (including Ego Nwodim’s squaddie, who asks what the deal is with Damien and Ethan) bobbing and pausing in cutscene verisimilitude that’s pretty amusing.
Weekend Update update
SNL throttled back on Trump this week. Sample Update joke: Trump is a gabbling ninny whenever he has to do something like, oh, describe a token section of his racist Game Of Thrones wall (which is apparently equipped with “anti-climb” properties). The episode veered most toward Joe Biden jokes tonight, which is fair enough, I suppose. I did like the nimbleness of Jost’s jab at the supposed acronym of the pro-Trump group, “Independent Republicans Of New York,” currently attacking someone other than Trump for getting creepily and nonconsensually handsy with unsuspecting women: IRONY.
It was a short and not particularly biting or memorable Update itself, but the correspondent pieces were both low-key winners. Kenan’s Charles Barkley is one of the SNL all-star’s best impressions, his sonorously enthusiastic Barkley riffing in off-the-cuff inappropriateness about his gambling habits, the state of Minnesota (“the only thing black in Minnesota is toenails”), and, taking a hilariously vindictive offramp, lake- and river-folk. Kenan can carry a bit just by virtue of how relaxed he is in character, and his Barkley’s rolling delivery makes jokes about picking fictional inner-city Hogwarts Central in his NCAA bracket segue into the revelation that it was from an old, unmade Wayans Brothers script someone sent him in 2004 reliably funny.
Alex Moffat got the biggest hit of the night with his new character, movie critic Terry Fink, whose “macrodosing” LSD strategy for seeing every current release has left him a smooth-talking lunatic. There was more than a little Casey Kasem in Moffat’s beaming patter, but no matter, as Moffat scored another Update success that, one imagines, will be run into the ground before his SNL tenure is up. (See: Guy Who Just Bought A Boat.) The joke’s in the juxtaposition between Fink’s glib professional tone and his pronouncements that Dumbo is “ a terrifying journey through hell” with a “touching jihadi message,” and A Star Is Born is a thinly veiled depiction of his drug-fueled experiences at Penn Station. Add to that Fink’s confidently insane and easily repeatable rating system (Dumbo gets three screaming hot dogs and one Dr. Robotnik), and we’re sure to see Terry Fink again and again, until we forget why he was so funny the first time.
“What do you call that act?” “The Californians!”—Recurring sketch report
Only Kenan’s Sir Charles, encouragingly.
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
The cold open was Trump and Baldwin-less tonight, so that alone is a bit of a present. Again, we’re in the midst of a right-wing, white supremacist takeover of American democracy led by the most buffoonish blowhard bing-bong to ever soil the White House, but if SNL wants to take a week off from its heretofore labored Trump material for a week, then I think we could all use the break. Instead, we got the mixed blessing of a Joe Biden sketch. Mixed because, on the one hand, because the bit relied on some relatively toothless and un-insightful jokes about the former Vice President and current unannounced presidential candidate’s currently newsworthy habit of invading women’s space and comfort zones. Not to wade into a complicated issue of generational attitudes toward appropriate interpersonal behavior except to say, “Hey, old man, women are creeped out by your lack of boundaries and old man paws, so knock that shit off, huh?,” I’ll stick to critiquing the sketch. Announcing itself with Cecily Strong’s statement of purpose, “Joe’s a good guy and he means well, he’s just a little behind the times,” pretty much sets the bar for how pointed the sketch is going to be, with the garrulously handy Biden’s penchant for too-close sniffing, shoulder-rubbing, and other creepy-uncle behaviors being played off as essentially harmless. Which is one way to go on Biden, I guess, although the fact that Biden keeps making jokes about the controversy at campaign appearances suggests he’s leaning into such enabling coddling without learning much.
On the plus side, Biden’s current newsworthiness brought Jason Sudeikis back to 8H, which is a much more encouraging and welcome development in the long-term guesting arena than Baldwin’s has turned out to be. A stealth pick for SNL MVP in his eight years on the show, Sudeikis’ tooth-flashing, bluff Biden was always a note-perfect impression, capturing both the practiced wild-card folksiness that made Biden a ready caricature of himself, and the slightly out-of-touch aging Washington pro that continually reminds us how slickly manipulative that persona can be. The sketch itself treated Biden’s boundary-breaking in mostly predictable fashion, with Sudeikis’ enthusiastically befuddled Biden getting the laughs through force of performance and personality. As to whether the joke that his touchy-feely style is only appreciated by Leslie Jones’ black undecided voter is a stereotype-driven cop-out on the whole issue, well, yeah, it is. ( My biggest laugh was Sudeikis’s seemingly offhand appreciative observation after the enthusiastic Jones went to town on his butt, “Oh, her thumbs,” so I might be part of the problem.) Still, as this undoubtedly soul-sucking election cycle grinds on, the prospect of having Sudeikis in the house every once in a while is a bright spot on the bleak horizon.
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In the other political bit of the night, we went across the pond, as musical guest Sara Bareilles’ “She Used To Be Mine” played over a montage of Kate McKinnon’s Theresa May coping with her current image as a Brexit-bungling, un-Churchillian mess of a Prime Minister. Inevitably drawing the memory to the show’s “Hallelujah” farewell to Hillary Clinton, the piece cements Kate’s place in the “questionably toned, mawkish musical summation of a fraught politician’s career” genre. What are we doin’ here? The piece itself is lovely on its meticulously polished surface, with McKinnon making her subject’s lonely pariah status subtly and humorously affecting, as the PM ventures out into the streets, only to be shoulder-bumped, bird-pooped, and flipped-off by some Coldstream Guards, before changing into a Union Jack unitard for some Sia-esque interpretive dancing, and a dream ballet and makeout session with Harington’s understanding Churchill.
But Brexit is a catastrophic, xenophobia-drivenmess, and May’s lack of leadership in finding a way to manage (or, better yet, scuttle) the nationalistic nonsense is worthy of a lot more insightful and/or harsh assessment than Bareilles’ winsome lyrics and May’s final pronouncement (“Well fuck you, I’m trying”) leave her with here. As with the Biden sketch, there’s a mushy, centrist “all in good fun” toothlessness at play here that’s breezily proficient, and thoroughly disposable. Not all political satire has to be mean-spirited, but none should be so pointlessly deferential.
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I am hip to the musics of today
Putting aside the questionable use of her music in the May sketch, Sara Bareilles was pretty great. Feelingly sung, liltingly lovely, deeply personal piano ballads are hard to resist when someone is as expert at them—and at staring down the camera—as is Bareilles. And if the piano sound of “Saint Honesty” sounds a little like the final ad break interstitial SNL band’s noodling, that’s not a problem, really.
Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
Something of a welcome team effort tonight. Points for letting Ego Nwodim into the mix—it’s like someone is finally learning from how ill-used Sasheer Zamata was.
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“What the hell is that thing?”—The Ten-To-Oneland Report
If you’re going to do a sketch about doctor Leslie Jones preparing to stick her impossibly long-nailed fingers up the host’s bum, then the last sketch of the night is the snuggest fit, I suppose. The joke about a dude being squirmy about anything butthole-related is beyond old, so it was neat how Harington’s patient (British, thankfully) knowingly deflected his nervousness with good humor. And once the broad butt stuff kicked in, the episode’s streak of oddball specificity returned, as Cecily, nurse Leslie, and orderly Pete Davidson all threw in funny little touches. (“Funny Little Touches” is not the name of this sketch, but it could be.) I laughed at Pete’s immediate command, “Give up!” while wrestling Harington’s legs above his head, and Cecily’s runner about Jones’ physician being the best proctologist in Arizona (excluding Phoenix). The reveal tossed in another goofy layer (Harington’s Undercover Boss is delighted at his employees’ performance) that ends things as pleasantly silly as they started.
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Stray observations
Newly beardless Harington joked about him looking like Jon Snow just got signed by the Yankees, admitting that he genuinely doesn’t know why that’s funny. Ask Johnny Damon.
For the second week in a row, a funny bit player’s name escapes me at press time. (Last week, that was writer Bowen Yang doing funny work as Kim Jong-un.) So give it up for the funny audience member dragged out for demanding Game Of Thrones spoilers while exclaiming, “Bitch, I didn’t come here for sketches!”
McKinnon’s behavior coach, after Biden asks why, unlike Trump, his inappropriateness is a thing: “Unlike his voters, your voters actually care.”
I also laughed at Jones’ voter excitedly greeting Biden as “Obama’s granddaddy!”
Che, chiming in on the accusations against Biden, says he can see it, since Biden gives off the vibe of “one of those uncles that calls Spring ‘sundress time!’”
One nephew’s listed interests reads “No geodes.”
No doubt AV Club comrade Myles McNutt is busily updating his #EmptyCupAwards after Kyle, Beck, and Kit’s prop work in the office sketch.
“Here’s something about me. When my nephew Dylan first got a detention at school, I sobbed so hard that they took me to the hospital.”
Terry Fink, after Colin Jost points out that A Star Is Born came out last year: “Oh Colin, you still believe in time?”
“You can’t put a price tag on colorectal health.” “Where would you hang it?”
Next week: Host—Emma Stone. Musical guest—[hold for worldwide squealing] K-pop megastars BTS.
INDIO, Calif. -- A Coachella worker has died while setting up for the music and arts festival in the Southern California desert.
Goldenvoice, which puts Coachella in Indio each year, said in a statement the man was a lead rigger who died in a fall while working on a stage on festival grounds at the Empire Polo Club. The statement did not identify him by name but said he had been on the Coachella team for 20 years.
The six-day festival, spread over two long weekends, is scheduled to begin Friday.
The statement said all at Coachella are "grieving this loss." It said the worker was "doing what he loved."
Ariana Grande, Childish Gambino and Janelle Monae are among numerous acts to take to the Coachella stages this year.
Because we’d watch the heck outta a Jon Snow-centric romantic drama… or a Daria-style animated show about Arya… or The Marvelous Mrs. Melisandre.
In a pre-taped bit, host/Thrones star Kit Harington and members of the cast played off the hype about the HBO series’ final season by promoting some truly excellent offshoots.
John and Gilly in a sitcom called The King of Queens Landing? Famous eunuchs Varys and Grey Worm in No Ballers? Cersei and the City? Give us a minute while we set our dream DVRs. (And if you didn’t see Harington’s Thrones-inspired SNL monologue, check it out here.)
Perhaps the best moment in the piece came when Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T showed up in a crossover titled Game of Thrones: Special Victims Unit. (Anyone else catch that the executive producer of that one was Dire Wolf?)
Of course, HBO is developing a Thrones prequel pilot that is set thousands of years before the events of the original series. Per the official logline, the project will chronicle “the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour” and will offer a different perspective on the series’ mythology.
Press PLAY on the video above, then hit the comments: Which fake Thrones spinoff was your favorite?
