Except For Chevy Chase As Gerald Ford
Yesterday's SNL started with Fred Armisen doing a President Obama sketch. Armisen's Obama has always been weak, but it seemed like he wasn't even trying any more.
You don't have to be perfect, but compare this to previous imitations of Bush (41 and 43), Clinton, Gore, Dukakis and so on. Armisen (who I like otherwise) didn't look or sound like Obama.
Sometimes it takes a while for the performer to get the essence of the subject, such as Carvey's Bush, but Armisen seems to be losing ground. Technically speaking, it's the worst presidential imitation I've ever seen on SNL. It's gonna be a long four to eight years.
posted by LAGuy @ 1:11 AM
5 Comments:
What about Dan Aykroyd's Jimmy Carter (he had a moustache) and Nixon too and of course Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford (which is essntially the same clueless character Chevy Chase is playing Community these days).
As I recall, the Reagan's weren't that memorable eithe
OK I ddin't read the title
Aykroyd may have had that stupid mustache (sometimes), but was known as a good impressionist. In fact, I remember the first thing I ever read about him was he was known for his great Nixon. And his Carter turned out to be pretty memorable too.
And some of the greatest sketches they ever did featured Phil Hartman's Reagan. Hartman was probably the best impressionist they ever had--he believed in actually capturing the sound of the person, not doing a caricature.
I think Fred Armisen's Obama is as good as Aykroyd's Carter or Nixon- Through nostalgia and repetition Aykroyd's portrayals now seem classic but at the time they seemed lesser efforts when compared to the mimicry of Rich Little and David Frye (who now seem to me horrendously unfunny, but seemed a lot funnier at the time). Perspective machine at work.
Fred A doesn't sound like Obama but he has a definitive way of speaking when in the Obama character which will over time (if they stick with it which I guess they will) will become identified as the Obama voice in the same way Tina Fey's Midwestern Minnesota-type accent became identified with Sarah Palin's voice even though SP doesn't really sound like that.
This doesn't change the fact that, unlike the Tina Fey bits, the Fred Armisen Obama sketches don't seem to be that funny(the only one I liked was Dwayne Johnson in the "The Rock" Obama sketch and that had little to do with Fred who usually plays the character as a straight man)
I've commented in the past on the weakness of the Obama sketches. I think that's for a different reason. All I'm talking about here is the technical side.
My point is not only was Armisen's opening sketch last Saturday a much worse impression of Obama than Aykroyd's was for Carter and Nixon (and let me repeat that Aykroyd's Nixon was considered good before he joined SNL--maybe they just had low standards in the 70s)--but that Armisen himself had backslid. Last season, he sorta kinda sounded like Obama (who sorta kinda sounds like Mike Dukakis), but this season he seems to have dropped the aural imitation.
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