The Best, Worst, And Most Baffling Jokes From Jimmy Kimmel's Oscars Monologue
It's Jimmy Kimmel's fourth time hosting the Oscars, and not everyone was thrilled about it when he was first announced. He's considered a safe, dependable host — one who tells plenty of jokes but who never ruffles too many feathers or does anything too unpredictable.
This time around, Kimmel began his opening monologue by acknowledging the event's five minute delay (seemingly the result of protestors delaying the entrance of audience members into the building) and then continued on with a speech that was business as usual. If you liked Kimmel's previous hosting gigs, there's a lot to love here. If you didn't, well, maybe next year there'll be a different host.
If you missed it, here's a quick rundown of how it all went. Some of Kimmel's material felt fresh and funny, some of it was tired or in bad taste, and some of it was just sort of confusing. Let's do the good news first...
The best
When talking about "Barbie," which was nominated for multiple Oscars this year, Kimmel joked about how Ryan Gosling "won the genetic lottery," and then added, "Ryan, you are so hot." His thirsting then continued towards director Christopher Nolan, ("A very attractive man"), before complimenting Cillian Murphy's appearance as well. Kimmel seems to be awfully attracted to most of the nominated men this time around.
His other jokes included a harsh (but probably deserved) early cheap shot at "Madame Web," followed by the world's corniest dad joke about the creatives behind "Poor Things." Pointing out that both the director and the editor were named "Yorgos," and both of them were nominated for awards, Kimmel asked, "Will they both win? Yorgos is as good as mine." This got as many audible groans from the in-person audience as it did laughs, but we appreciate the swing.
But the best joke in the monologue technically wasn't even a joke at all: Near the end, Kimmel spoke at length about the importance of unions, an especially relevant topic given the historic writers' and actors' strike that brought the industry to a standstill in 2023. He threw in a shot at the directors' union ("You guys folded immediately") and went back to praising all the people who fought the good fight against greedy studio heads who were slow to provide protections for everyone else in the film industry. The best part, though, was that Kimmel brought out a bunch of "the people who work behind the scenes" out on stage, and let them enjoy a standing ovation.
The worst
We get it, Jimmy, you don't like long movies. Kimmel did an extended bit complaining about the runtime of several of the Best Picture nominees, and it all felt very played out, not to mention vaguely anti-intellectual. "When I went to see 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' I had my mail forwarded to the theater," he said. "'Killers of the Flower Moon' was so long that in the time it takes you to watch it, you can drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders yourself." It felt like lazy, low-hanging fruit, the sort of joke that should've been pitched and discarded early on in the writing process. It's a reminder of why so many people don't like Kimmel hosting the Oscars: The guy doesn't actually seem to like movies that much. At least, not movies that challenge their audience.
Kimmel also makes a questionable joke about how Greta Gerwig turned "Barbie" into a feminist icon, which might annoy any viewer who's properly familiar with the Barbie lore, who sees Barbie as having always been at least somewhat feminist. "Barbie" is still surely a feminist movie, but it didn't quite improve Barbie as much as Kimmel's material implies.
The strangest joke was probably the dig at Robert Downey Jr.'s struggle with sobriety throughout his early career with a reference to "one of the highest points" of his career. In his seat, RDJ calmly pointed at his nose, making Kimmel ask, "Was that too on the nose, or a drug motion you made?" We're sure RDJ has dealt with meaner jokes over the years, but it still feels like a bit of a low blow, one that didn't seem to land as well with audiences as Kimmel might've expected.
Most baffling
When it came to his material about the multiple foreign films up for Best Picture this year, Kimmel set his sights on Sandra Hüller. "Sandra plays a woman on trial for murdering her husband in 'Anatomy of a Fall,' and a Nazi housewife next to Auschwitz in 'Zone of Interest,'" he said. "While these are very heavy subjects for American moviegoers, in Sandra's native Germany, they're called rom-coms." Such a tired joke about the cliche of Germans being very dry and humorless didn't seem to land well with either the audience or Hüller herself. (And Messi the dog didn't laugh at all!)
Also on the weird end of things was when Kimmel threw in a dig at Robert De Niro for dating younger women, adding more fuel to the fire of the internet's heated ongoing age gap discourse. The joke in question started off on a sweet note, with Kimmel pointing out that De Niro and Jodie Foster had both won awards for "Taxi Driver" in 1976 and were now nominated again all these years later. But before we could assume Kimmel was just bringing attention to an older beloved movie for audiences to check out, he added, "In 1976, Jodie Foster was young enough to be Robert De Niro's daughter. Now, she's 20 years too old to be his girlfriend."
So all in all, it was a pretty middling monologue from Kimmel this year. Nothing too horrendous, but nothing all that impressive, either. Then again, for an event that still remembers the infamous slap of 2022, maybe safe and predictable is exactly what they wanted.