If you were to tell me that Saturday Night Live would gather up all of its grand presidential impersonators for a one-time reunion, then I'd remind you that Phil Hartman is dead, and stop playing me. But you kept at it, and told me, hey, what if we got Jim Carrey to play the ghost of Ronald Reagan with a dash of Ace Ventura, then I'd go, oh, really, well, which SNL is this going to be on?
Oh, it's not on SNL. It's on Funny or Die. OK. Ready for the viral video action! Wait. This is a PSA? Or as you kids call it, a public service announcement. For the banking crisis. Directed by Ron "used to be Opie or Richie Cunningham if you're an older person, and just another big movie director if you're a kid" Howard. For real this time. If you think SNL's political "cold open" sketches are weirdly too focused on making points, then full speed ahead into the danger zone. At least Dan Aykroyd looks more like Jimmy Carter a generation later (can you believe Aykroyd pretended to be Carter with a mustache on live TV?), as does Chevy Chase as the late Gerald Ford. As for Dana Carvey as Bush 41, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Will Ferrell as W., Fred Armisen as Barack Obama and Maya Rudolph as Michelle Obama, well, you're not going to see anything here you haven't seen before. Just all of them together in a room. Isn't that special? Roll the clips.
There's also a behind-the-scenes video, if you need to see how and where the magic happens. Which means bloopers and jokes. You like bloopers and jokes.
The internet is LITERALLY exploding with this today, but I’m glad to see someone as skeptical as I am about the comedy here. I feel like this was a hugely wasted opportunity. Sure, there are some funny bits sprinkled around (Michelle’s arm toning, seeing Chase go right into “Live from New York” after his pratfall), but mostly it just plays like a bad GI Joe PSA.
Funny Video. I really enjoyed the video. Its is so funny that it made me laugh so much. Thanks for sharing it…