It seemed that with experienced SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE host Seth Rogen returning to the show for his third visit tonight, SNL had a fair chance of continuing its mini-streak of worthwhile episodes after the Louis C.K. and Anna Kendrick outings, but no such luck.  Although the night didn’t live up to Rogen’s monologue promise […]

  Dwayne Johnson is an ideal kind of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE host:  a big-time movie star with enthusiasm, panache, a sense of humor about himself, and a willingness to be utterly silly.  It’s no surprise that tonight was his 4th time as host, and while his presence wasn’t enough to rescue a typically uneven SNL, […]

  50 Shades of Grey has only been playing in theatres for 2 weeks, but it’s plunged so quickly from its opening weekend that Dakota Johnson already seems a bit like the answer to a pop culture trivia question.  Nevertheless, the star of the presumed franchise (produced by Universal, which also owns NBC, which also […]

  Matthew McConaughey, one of the rare SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE hosts with nothing to promote, stood out even more in an installment that featured prominent plugs for musical guest Adele and the new Star Wars movie.  Although McConaughey is a Serious Oscar-Winning Actor these days, he’s done plenty of comedy throughout his career, and he […]

  “Wildly uneven” was probably the best that could have been hoped from a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE hosted by non-actor, non-comic (but NBC synergy bait) Blake Shelton.  There were times when the need to come up with ideas for a star out of their comfort zone seemed to inspire the SNL writers, but also some […]

  Often the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE cast needs to prop up its weekly hosts, who are frequently performers unversed in live comedy (or comedy at all, or even performing at all), but that was hardly the case tonight, as Taraji P. Henson all but blew most of the regulars away, playing even the most routine […]

  Whether it was appropriate in the first place (other than for ratings, obviously) for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE to turn over 90 minutes of its hugely valuable, non-news airtime to Donald Trump, who already gets more media attention than any other candidate, is debatable.  But SNL certainly didn’t bolster its brand by failing to challenge Trump in […]

  It would have been nice if Reese Witherspoon had shown triumphant comic chops on tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, in the face of her terrible new movie comedy Hot Pursuit, but although she was a poised and enthusiastic host, it was just another uneven SNL. Witherspoon was mostly an observer for the funniest bit of […]