Given the way this awards season started—with Jo Koy’s absolutely abysmal performance as Golden Globes host—the bar was low for this year’s Oscars host, Jimmy Kimmel. Luckily for all of us, he made it through nearly unscathed. Here are Kimmel’s opening monologue jokes, ranked from the best to the most groan-worthy.
Actual LOLs
• This night is full of enormous talent, and untold potential. But so was Madame Web, so who knows?
• Barbie is a feminist icon thanks to Greta Gerwig, who many believe deserved to be nominated for Best Director. [The audience applauds.] I know you’re clapping, but you’re the ones who didn’t vote for her, by the way. Don’t act like you had nothing to do with this.
• Not even 20 years ago, things weren’t going that great for Robert [Downey Jr.]. He played the villain in a movie where Tim Allen turns into a dog, right? And if you ever decide to remake that film, I have just the guy to play Tim Allen. Messi [from Anatomy of a Fall]! Who, even though he’s a dog, may have given the performance of the year in Anatomy of a Fall. Messi has an overdose scene. Honestly I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gérard Depardieu.
• Emma Stone, you are so unbelievably great in Poor Things. Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night.
• Bradley [Cooper] brings his mother to every awards show. It’s very sweet, but I guess the question is: How many times can one bring his mom as his date before he is actually dating his mom? Are you working on a movie about Freud right now and not telling us?
• In the future, they will be adding an Oscar for Achievement in Casting. That is great news for actors because now, not only will you be able to watch someone else win an Oscar for a part you didn’t get, you’ll also be able to watch the person who didn’t think you were right for it win one too.
• Remember that kid from The Fabelmans? This is what he looks like now. [The camera cuts to Steven Spielberg.]
• For five months, this group of writers, actors, directors—the people who actually make the films—said, “We will not accept a deal.” Well, not the directors. You guys folded immediately. But the rest of us said, “We will not accept a deal without protections against artificial intelligence.” And as a result, actors no longer have to worry about getting replaced by A.I. Thanks to this historic agreement, actors are now able to go back to worrying about being replaced by younger, more attractive people.
• If a movie premieres at the Grove and there are no actors there to promote it, does Mario Lopez make a sound?
• This very strange town of ours, as pretentious and superficial as it can be, at its heart is a union town. It’s not just a bunch of heavily Botoxed, Hailey Bieber, smoothie-drinking, diabetes-prescription-abusing, gluten-sensitive nepo babies with perpetually shivering chihuahuas. This is a coalition of strong, hardworking, mentally tough laborers—women and men who would 100 percent for sure die if we even had to touch the handle of a shovel.
Meh
• Ryan [Gosling] and Margot [Robbie], I want you to know that if neither one of you wins an Oscar tonight, you both already won something much more important: the genetic lottery. Ryan … you are so hot. Let’s go camping together and not tell our wives.
• Killers of the Flower Moon is so long, in the time it takes you to watch it, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders yourself.
• Not only is Yorgos [Lanthimos] nominated for Best Director, his editor—whose name is also Yorgos, Yorgos Mavropsaridis—is nominated too. We have two Yorgoses in the house tonight. Will they both win? Yorgos is as good as mine. … All right, let’s get 20 seconds for room tone?
• 48 years ago, Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster were nominated for Taxi Driver, and they’re both nominated again tonight. 1976 was the year. That’s pretty crazy. In 1976 Jodie Foster was young enough to be Robert De Niro’s daughter—now she’s 20 years too old to be his girlfriend.
Were They Groaning or Booing?
• This is the highest point of Robert Downey Jr.’s long and illustrious career … well, one of the highest points. … I mean, look at this guy: He’s so handsome, so talented. He’s won every award there is to win. Is that an acceptance speech in your pocket, or do you just have a very rectangular penis?
• Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a smartphone, he doesn’t use email, and he writes his scripts on a computer with no internet connection, which is a powerful way of saying, “I will not allow my porn addiction to get in the way of my work.”
• Interesting fact about [Cillian Murphy’s] name: It’s pronounced kill-ee-an when he does drama. When he does comedy, it’s silly-ann.
• Before she got this movie, Lily [Gladstone] was ready to quit acting and take a job at the Department of Agriculture tracking murder hornets. Now she’s nominated for an Oscar, which is so great for her, but also makes me worry that no one is tracking these murder hornets.
• Sandra [Hüller] plays a woman on trial for murdering her husband in Anatomy of a Fall and a Nazi housewife living next to Auschwitz in The Zone of Interest, and while these are very heavy subjects for American moviegoers, in Sandra’s native Germany, they’re called rom-coms.
