And now, a not-terribly-funny commercial announcing the return of Billy Crystal as host of this year's Academy Awards to anyone mercifully-detached enough from entertainment news so as to NOT already be aware that he'd been brought in to salvage the show after the originally-planned Bret Ratner/Eddie Murphy production blew up in everybody's faces - which, come to think of it, is exactly the audience Crystal's return will thrill the most, so... good call, I guess:
I know, I know, it's trite to bag on Crystal. I actually like the guy as an actor, and he IS good at the "your gracious host" schtick... at least, as good as anyone is.
Come to think of it... anyone else think maybe Crystal overshot his true calling? I mean, it felt like in the 90s he stopped doing standup and transitioned out of regular host-type gigs in a bid to become a Tom Hanks style comedy/drama leading man and it didn't really "take" outside of the first "City Slickers." I wonder if he wouldn't have been better off (to say nothing of better-suited) to getting into something like the Late Night Talk scene? Like, imagine if Billy Crystal had become the host of The Tonight Show instead of Leno? Or, better yet, if Letterman had gotten the Tonight Show like he ought to have and Crystal got the competing (and more-appropriately New York-based) Late Show instead? He would have KILLED at that!
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