Tag: Cecily Strong

The Top 50 SNL Cast Members of All Time: Number 9 – Kate McKinnon

Upright Citizens Brigade alum Kate McKinnon scored ten Emmy nominations during her ten-year tenure on SNL and it’s no mystery. In the past decade and change on the show, she’s been the standout with unforgettable impressions and truly strange fictional creations.

Her collection of impersonations runs the gamut from an uncanny Ellen DeGeneres and Jane Lynch to lots of political figures including Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elizabeth Warren, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Sessions. McKinnon’s range is wide as she can land excellent takes on Justin Bieber, Maggie Smith, and Lisa Kudrow.

The most known non-impression work is Colleen Rafferty, a rough around the edges recent abductee in viral sketches with Cecily Strong and, most famously, Ryan Gosling. There’s Sheila Sovage, her constantly intoxicated bar patron in the uproarious Last Call bits. At the Update desk, Russian current events commentator Olya was a highlight. #8 will be up soon!

Kate McKinnon

Years on the Show: 2012-22

The Top 50 SNL Cast Members of All Time: Number 22 – Michael Che and Colin Jost

So we actually have 51 cast members in my all-time top 50 because it’s impossible not to put these two together. Let’s be honest – Saturday Night Live is a show that can swing from a strong episode one weekend to a weaker outing the next. Sometimes this depends on the host or maybe the third episode in as many weeks tends to run out of gas.

Yet in the past decade, Weekend Update has been a consistent highlight thanks to the coanchoring skills of Michael Che and Colin Jost. The latter has been on staff as a writer since 2005 while the former came on board in 2013. Lorne Michaels paired them together at the beginning of season 40 on air and they’re still going in season 50.

The Che/Jost Update started off shaky. It didn’t take long for them to hit their stride and this is best evidenced by the hilariously inappropriate Joke Swap bit they do each year. That’s when the anchors pen off-color gags for one another to read without the deliverer having seen it. As Banya from Seinfeld would say, it’s (comedy) gold. They also expertly manage top-notch performers including Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Heidi Gardner, Pete Davidson, Bowen Yang, and more doing some of their best work on the fake news set. Che and Jost are in the upper echelon of SNLers behind the Update desk in its half century of existence. #21 will be up soon!

Michael Che and Colin Jost

Years on the Show: 2014-Present

The Top 50 SNL Cast Members of All Time: Number 31 – Seth Meyers

For 13 years, Seth Meyers served different roles on Saturday Night Live. During the first five, he was a regular featured player and while solid, he would not have made this list if not for his ascension to the Weekend Update chair in 2006 alongside Amy Poehler. They’re “Really!?!” segments were a particular highlight. Meyers would get the Update segment to himself beginning 2008. That was a year in which, as head writer, he was penning Tina Fey’s iconic bits as VP candidate Sarah Palin. He would go onto become the apple of legendary Stefon’s idea by way of Bill Hader’s legendary creation.

His Update duties (with a brief late period where Cecily Strong joined as coanchor) and SNL tenure lasted until 2014 when Meyers left to take over NBC’s 12:30pm Late Night franchise. He would succeed two other notable show vets in writer Conan O’Brien and cast member Jimmy Fallon. Like those two, Meyers is in among the pantheon of SNL’s finest. #30 will be up soon!

Seth Meyers

Years on the Show: 2001-14

The Top 50 SNL Cast Members of All Time: Number 32 – Cecily Strong

Over the period of a decade, Cecily Strong was one of the most consistently sturdy presences on Saturday Night Live in recent years. The longest tenured female cast member in the show’s history, the Second City alum briefly cohosted Update alongside Colin Jost before Michael Che replaced her.

Yet her best contributions came via the Update desk in non hosting segments such as playing Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. There’s memorable characters including the heavily opinionated Cathy Anne or the dimwitted Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party or the One-Dimensional Female Character from a Male-Driven Comedy. #31 will be up soon!

Cecily Strong

Years on the Show: 2012-22

The Top 50 SNL Cast Members of All Time: Number 40 – Aidy Bryant

Aidy Bryant might not have had many signature characters on SNL during her decade on the show, but she was certainly a consistently solid presence. That especially applies to her Li’l Baby Aidy persona seen in some Digital Shorts or the creepily flirtatious Melanie.

She was part of a golden age of recent female cast members that includes Kate McKinnon, Vanessa Bayer, and Cecily Strong. They haven’t been on this list yet, but Bryant leads off that impressive group. #39 will be up soon!

Aidy Bryant

Years on the Show: 2012-2022

Oscar Predictions: The Garfield Movie

Our nation’s most famous lasagna adoring orange cat hits theaters this Memorial Day weekend with The Garfield Movie. A year after (somewhat controversially) providing the voice of Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Chris Pratt does the same for this title character. Other notable thespians lending their talents are Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Giuillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Janelle James, and Snoop Dogg. Mark Dindal directs.

Even the fresher reviews for Garfield mostly call it nothing more than a pleasant diversion. The Rotten Tomatoes meter sits at a meager 55%. Mario didn’t manage any attention in the Animated Feature race and Pratt’s latest contribution to animation won’t either. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…

The Garfield Movie Box Office Prediction

Arriving 20 years after the live-action version Garfield: The Movie based on the comic strip from Jim Davis, The Garfield Movie hits multiplexes this Memorial Day weekend. Mark Dindal, who made Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove and Chicken Little, directs. Chris Pratt, after providing the vocal stylings for Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie last year, mics up for the iconic tabby cat. Other voice work comes from Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Janelle James, and Snoop Dogg.

The aforementioned Garfield: The Movie from two decades ago (which led to a classic comedy line from Bill Murray in Zombieland) took in $21 million for starters and $75 million overall domestically. The 2006 sequel Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties was the equivalent of cinematic kitty litter with only $28 million total in its coffers.

This animated rendering seems poised for better results than what happened several years ago. The holiday frame should bring families out in droves and competition from the second weekend of IF may only be a minor threat.

For the Friday to Monday frame, I believe this could get a little north of $40 million.

The Garfield Movie opening weekend prediction: $41.5 million (Friday to Monday estimate)

For my Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga prediction, click here:

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Box Office Prediction

For my Sight prediction, click here:

Sight Box Office Prediction

The Boss Movie Review

There’s a through line that’s marked a number of Melissa McCarthy vehicles since her Oscar-nominated turn in 2011’s Bridesmaids. Take the greatly talented comedic actress, give her a mostly unpleasant character, establish a backstory that makes her somewhat sympathetic, and hope audiences eat it up. These rules have generally applied to Identity Thief, The Heat, and Tammy. None of them have been terribly impressive due to weak material. This applies to The Boss as well.

Reuniting with her Tammy director Ben Falcone (who’s also her husband), McCarthy is self-made mogul Michelle Darnell. She’s a ruthless investor who sells out arenas with her take no prisoners business advice. Kristen Bell is Claire, her overloaded executive assistant who isn’t even allowed that lofty sounding title. When Michelle’s actions land her a short stint in Club Fed for insider trading, she’s back to square one and dependent on her old subordinate for lodging. That means crashing on the sofa in a crowded apartment with Claire’s young daughter (Ella Anderson). A trip with that child to a Girl Scout type meeting gives Michelle her first post felony money making idea: take Claire’s delicious brownie making skills, market them with a team of cute kids selling them, and work her way back up the corporate ladder.

Along the way, Michelle clashes with some of her new minions parents (most humorously with Annie Mumolo’s tightly wound Mom). These clashes even lead to an Anchorman style no holds barred brawl (Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are producers). The title character also deals with some of her own movie backstory demons. When she was young, Michelle bounced from one unhappy foster home to the next and has no sense or need in her view for family. Claire and daughter threaten to upset that apple cart.

There’s also the matter of her business rival  Renault, former lover and wannabe samurai Renault (Peter Dinklage) trying to shut her burgeoning brownie enterprise down. His character is as bizarre as he sounds, but the “Game of Thrones” star does throw himself into it with gusto. A superfluous subplot involves Claire trying to get her groove back with a kind co-worker (Tyler Lapine).

The Boss veers between wildly broad characters and physical comedy (which McCarthy and her stunt double are quite good at) and attempts at heart string pulling that falls flat. McCarthy’s abilities were proven nearly six years ago in one Bridesmaids scene where she told Kristin Wiig to get her act together. It was a brilliant scene that I suspect is responsible for that Oscar nod. Unfortunately, by now, McCarthy’s act is getting disappointingly familiar and the material she’s giving herself is forgettable.

** (out of four)

Ghostbusters Movie Review

After over a quarter century of dormancy, the Ghostbusters have been rebooted with a female team and an appreciation for what came before it. Maybe too much appreciation. The 2016 iteration may not be ‘fraid of no ghosts, but perhaps it is of its own 1984 shadow and what followed it.

The concept here isn’t much different. Take a talented director (Paul Feig) and fill the leading roles with SNL related stars. Here it’s Melissa McCarthy (a favorite SNL host) along with former cast member Kristin Wiig and current ones Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. They’re the new Ghostbusters and the New York City setting is the same. Wiig is a Columbia professor who once cowrote a paranormal related book that she’s trying to forget about. McCarthy is her coauthor who’s now stuck in a dead-end job at a technical college along with McKinnon (she handles gadgets). Jones is an MTA employee who finds that ghosts are real in the bowels of the city’s subway. The NYC setting provides one of the most abnormal moments here when the team chows down on Papa Johns pizza. In New York City?!?!?! Product placement is vital, people…

Ghouls and goblins begin to sprout up in the Big Apple and soon the foursome find themselves in business, even if the city’s leaders don’t wish to acknowledge the presence of them or those they’re hunting. The Annie Potts secretarial duties are handled by a game Chris Hemsworth, showing off the same occasional comedic abilities he showed in another subpar 80s relaunch last summer, Vacation.

And there’s cameos by way of the franchise before it – both in human and special effects form. They serve more to make us nod in knowing appreciation than actually laugh. As for the Ghostbusters themselves? McCarthy and Wiig acquit themselves fine and have their strong moments, as does Jones. The weakest link is McKinnon, whose over the top antics work well in five minute SNL sketch bursts but seem out of place and rather annoying here.

Perhaps what hinders Ghostbusters from being a satisfactory experience is the fact that the melding of science fiction and comedy felt fresh over 30 years ago with Ivan Reitman’s original. Since then, we’ve seen everything from Men in Black to more obvious (and less pleasing) knock offs like Evolution and The Watch to name just a couple. The injection of a gender change isn’t enough to make this feel new and the CG effects add nothing out of the ordinary either. It is the ghosts of genre past that ultimately haunts what we see here.

** (out of four)