Conan O’Brien brought the bizarre back to Oscar hosting.
In a studiously silly (and sniffily) performance that began with the gross-out humor of his emerging out of the body of Demi Moore from “The Substance,” O’Brien evoked some of his delightfully experimental bits from his old late-night show.
For winners whose speeches go on too long, he promised to cut to a shot of a game John Lithgow “looking slightly disappointed.” He continued a fun Adam Sandler bit from the Golden Globe Awards. And in a concise joke delivered deftly, he said: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here, but not that badly.”
The whole thing had a light touch: little roasting and no politics. The edgiest joke might have been when he promised that no A.I. was used in making the Oscars, before fessing up: “We used child labor.” But you got the sense this punchline mattered less than his follow-up, when Conan added out of nowhere: “We lost little Billy.” Not since David Letterman, the most underrated Oscar host of the modern era, has a monologue been this loopy.
