Oscars 2024: Jimmy Kimmel Celebrates Hollywood’s Strike Rebound in Zippy Monologue — Grade It!
Jimmy Kimmel’s fourth go-around as Oscars emcee started a few minutes late Sunday evening. So in response, the late-night host made sure his opening monologue zipped right along.
After a crack about how the ceremony started an hour earlier than usual but would likely still run over its timeslot, Kimmel said, “In fact, we’re already five minutes over, and I am not joking.” (More on that here.)
What followed was a series of jokes that kept moving as Kimmel warmed up the audience at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles. Among the yuks:
* When audiences applauded for Barbie director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie after Kimmel noted that neither had been nominated, he told the crowd of Academy Award voters, “Don’t act like you had nothing to do with this!”
* Kimmel then consoled Robbie and her Barbie co-star Ryan Gosling that even if Gosling didn’t win (he was nominated for Supporting Actor), that they’d been awarded “something much more important: the genetic lottery… Ryan, you are so hot. Let’s go camping together and not tell our wives.”
*”We have two Yorgoses in the house tonight,” Kimmel dad-joked, referring to Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos and film editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, both of whom were nominated. “Will they both win? Yorgos is as good as mine.”
* Also re: Poor Things: “Emma [Stone] played an adult woman with the brain of a child,” Kimmel quipped. “Like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday.”
* On the long running time of several of this year’s movies: “When I went to see Killers of the Flower Moon, I had my mail forwarded to the theater,” Kimmel said.
* Kimmel noted that when Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster were both nominated for Oscars for Taxi Driver in 1977, she was young enough to be his daughter. And this year, while both are once more nominated (him for Supporting Actor for Killers of the Flower Moon and her for Supporting Actress in Nyad), “Now she’s 20 years too old to be his girlfriend.” (When the camera cut to Foster, she nodded emphatically.)
Kimmel ended his monologue with a celebration of Hollywood’s return to normalcy following the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023, then he thanked the Teamsters for standing with the writers and actors — and brought several of the behind-the-scenes crew out on stage, where they received a standing ovation.
The evening marked the fourth time that Kimmel served as Oscars host, following his stints in 2017, 2018 and 2023.
Oscars 2024: Best & Worst Moments
Watch video of Kimmel’s monologue above, grade his Oscars opening via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
