Jason Sudeikis’ Mitt Romney impersonation is getting better and better on “Saturday Night Live.” But the guy doing Jon Huntsman has really nailed it.
Well almost. It was Huntsman himself, doing the kind of desperate guest shot usually reserved for the general election. But almost alone among the Republican candidates not to have at least a couple of weeks with double-digit support, Huntsman made his case for comedy on Saturday’s show.
It is usually Huntsman’s daughters who have been given the credit for comedy in the family, from the viral parodies they’ve been making. But Huntsman tried light humor as written on cue cards. Too bad the cards were up and away from the camera so that it appeared he was doing a Michele Bachmann – looking the wrong place for nearly the length of his segment.
It was a harmless bit about trying to kiss up to New Hampshire and he got to stand at the end of the show, with host Jason Segel, musical guest Florence + the Machine and the other cameo performers of the night, from all manner of Muppets to Paul Rudd.
It was sort of an off night for “SNL” – not every week can be a winner. But this one seemed to really pour on the Muppets, since Segel wrote, produced and stars in the theatrical movie that comes out this week.
And there’s something about the Muppets that don’t go well on the show – their innate sweetness prevents them from having the proper level of snark. They were to sure to mention the show has had Muppets regularly on the show in the early days, but they didn’t mention that it was pretty much a failure.
The sketches too seemed a little offhand. A tryout for Regis Philbin’s chair brought a whole host of celebrity impersonations of varying quality; the sketch about the family who kisses too much seemed like too much of a rerun (and its inclusion of Rudd at its end seemed a little gratuitous).