Jennifer Lawrence kicked of Saturday Night Live’s 2013 by putting her fellow best actress Oscar nominees in their places.
Many in the blogosphere believed her saying “I beat Meryl!” during her Golden Globes speech Sunday was a dig at Meryl Streep, an interpretation Lawrence denied. But she had no qualms about bashing her Oscar competition, using her opening monologue to say something nasty about each of her rivals.
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Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty): “Jessica Chastain? More like Jessica ain’t winning an Oscar on my watch.”
Naomi Watts: “You were in The Impossible. You know what else is impossible? You beating me on Oscar night.”
Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild): “What you talkin' about Wallace? The alphabet called. They want their letters back.”
Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) : “An 85-year-old French lady. Yeah. I think I can take you.”
But don’t be hasty with those torches and pitchforks. Lawrence followed up each dig with something nice about her competitors.
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SNL gave news junkies what they wanted in its cold open, tackling not one, not two, but three of the week’s big stories. A detailed description of what went down can be read here, but sufficed to say, Lance Armstrong, Notre Dame star Manti Te'o and Jodie Foster’s much-talked about Golden Globes speech got the SNL treatment.
Like host Jeremy Renner tackling The Avengers last year, Lawrence took on The Hunger Games in a sketch taking place after (spoiler alert) Katniss and Peeta win the games. ESPN-style journalists ask tough questions about the franchise (Where’s the chemistry between Katniss and Peeta?) and the sketch itself asks why the characters in a movie called The Hunger Games look so well fed.
The questions are a bit old at this point, but the bit was amusing enough.
SNL also skewered another franchise in the works, The Hobbit, with an ad revealing Peter Jackson has decided three movies won't be enough to achieve his vision of the classic children’s book. His solution? He's dividing the remaining two Hobbit films into 18 movies.
Here’s one of the film's titles:
The Hobbit 3: Shoot. I Just Realized We Forgot Something Back At The Shire. Mind If We Double Back?”
This is mundane Middle-earth to the Nth degree. Perhaps Tolkienites bored by the hour it takes for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to leave the Shire should take comfort in this sketch. It could have been much, much worse.
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Lawrence was relegated to sidekick status in a number of sketches, playing the intern on an obnoxious morning radio show in one bit and the sex kitten in an odd foreign language scene in another.
Likewise, the episode’s final sketch sees Lawrence play a Civil War-era woman pining for her soldier suitor. While she writes him flowery dispatches, he composes letters using modern slang.
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“Hey what’s up. I miss your body so much. Oh my God, you’re so hot,” reads one. He becomes obsessed with receiving a “tit pic,” something he asks for often in subsequent letters. Needless to say, things don’t work out for the couple.
SNL is new next week on NBC with The Voice’s Adam Levin hosting and musical guest Kendrick Lamar.
Email: Aaron.Couch@thr.com
Twitter: @AaronCouch
