For the past couple years now, I’ve compared Rob Ford to Chris Farley. Not Chris Farley in his prime; more like Chris Farley at the tail end of his career, when he was doing stuff like Beverly Hills Ninja. Never has that comparison been clearer than this past weekend’s Saturday Night Live.
That’s right. Rob Ford made SNL. The cold open even! Truly, our city has arrived.
[Screengrab via NBC]
The piece features the mayor (Bobby Moynihan) sitting down with a CBC reporter (Taran Killam) to talk about his string of disastrous press conferences, which found him mid-crack deal, telling the media to kiss his ass and dancing drunk before falling down dick-first.
It then transitions into a brief spoof of 60 Minutes and the heat on them in regard to the fake Benghazi report. But that’s not really about Toronto, so I’m just going to glaze over that part.
So how’d they do? Well, let’s start with the strong points: the writing is funny, let’s just get that out there. Moynihan goes for broke as usual, which I always find hysterical because he’s such a game performer, and his physicality was tight as tupperware. And Kate McKinnon’s overly trusting 60 Minutes correspondent was a surprisingly tasty nugget tucked away in the blow line.
The only real criticism here is that Moynihan didn’t really nail Ford’s voice. I don’t fault him too much, because he has a naturally sweet and doofy voice, but he needs to be just a touch gruffer. I’d also say that his impression is almost . . . too nice. Moynihan’s version of Ford is surprisingly sweet and genteel, and it has the same problem as Will Ferrell’s George W Bush: it softens up his image a little too much, which, considering just how disturbingly deep Ford’s case seems to be running, might not be for the best.
All in all, though? Pretty good sketch. It may not have gone straight for the jugular, but it was still a decent sketch focused on an admittable easy target.
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