There is a tremendous amount of debate today about whether Seth McFarlane did a good or bad job in his inaugural turn as Oscar host Sunday night, but no one is arguing over Andy Samberg’s hosting performance Saturday afternoon. Samberg was fantastic as this year’s Independent Spirit Awards host, but you probably didn’t catch his work since IFC broadcast it at 10 PM on Saturday night.
Let’s fix that and give Samberg the audience he deserves, shall we?
The Lonely Island and former “SNL” star took a big leap from his previous turn as MTV Movie Awards host several years ago to deliver a very funny opening monologue and several “we won’t call them SNL digital shorts but that’s really what they were” segments. Samberg recruited J.K. Simmons and Marisa Tomei for the on the nose indie spoof “Bottlecap” (“she just wants to roll her hand in the wind”), Rashida Jones and friends for a Skype audition piece and Jack Black for a video whose title says it all: “Beast It!”
Samberg’s opening monologue featured very few misses and some great winks from Paul Rudd (not sure what happened to him Oscar night), Amy Poehler and a very game John Hawkes. For more on the Spirits, check out our best and worst of the ceremony. The best of Samberg’s night is embedded below.
[Monologue starts 1:50 in]