Oscars go the Barbie way this year for their promo, with Jimmy Kimmel poking ‘Kennergic’ fun at their nomination snub
The first promo for Oscar 2024 is out and if it is just the pre-game, we are going to get served a decent dose of fun and cinematic appreciation this year live at the Dolby Theatre.
Last Updated: 02.35 PM, Feb 16, 2024
Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel dropped a nearly five-minute-long clip on his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, directed by the show’s director Will Burke, to hype his upcoming March 10 stint at the Academy Awards as their emcee. The promo saw the Oscars going the Barbie way this year, with a hilarious spoof set in Barbieland, with Helen Mirren spoofing her own narration from the film.
The Oscar Promo and its contents
The veteran actress’ godlike voice announced the video’s purpose. Since men have been getting lost since the beginning of time, this video also follows the similarly trajectory of the “story of one such dum-dum". Despite hosting the Oscars for the 4th time this year, Kimmel is stranded in Barbieland and seeks the help of Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie, who explains the Oscar map to him through the various top cinematic contenders this year.
Jimmy Kimmel and Weird Barbie’s journey to Hollywood
After a successful Carnegie Hall joke and Kimmel’s acceptance of his “limited-ness", Weird Barbie takes Jimmy with her for a ride to Hollywood on her Weird Wagon. The duo journeys through the wondrous transition scenes of Barbie, infused with pop-up characters from the various hit films of Oscar 2024. They say hi to Poor Thing’s Bella (Emma Stone), whom Weird Barbie introduces as her cousin, Weirder Barbie.
Then they wander through the Killers of the Flower Moon’s Osage Country, where the soil is rich in Italians and Robert De Niro. Jimmy Kimmel and Weird Barbie then pass through the performance of ‘Kennard’ Bernstein (very much like Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein from Maestro) before arriving at the final set of Oppenheimer.
The duo sail through the set by poking fun at friend Matt Damon’s persona and appearance in the film before jumping off the world and right back into Hollywood. A thankful Kimmel gets out of the car but suddenly experiences a bout of insecurity and a lack of confidence. But when things go the Barbie way, can being blue last long?
The Impossibility of holding the Oscars
America Ferreira pops out of the car from the front seat, ready with a retouched version of her laud-worthy speech from Barbie about the impossible hardships of being a woman. This time, she waxes eloquence and empathy on the impossibility of hosting the Oscars.
“It’s literally impossible to host the Oscars. You have to be extraordinary, but somehow, you’re always doing it wrong. You have to make fun of people, but you can’t make too much fun of people,” asserts Ferreira. “You can never show off, never fail, never show fear. No one ever says thank you, but everyone has something critical to say online,” she adds.
However, as a result of the empowering speech, all Kimmel derives is that “hosting the Oscars is harder than being a woman.” With twitching eyes and exchanged looks, both America Ferreira and Weird Barbie assure him he is wrong, but then Ryan Gosling joins in the fun. Armed with In-n-Out takeout, another fun reference to Paul Giamatti’s post-Golden Globe victory dinner became a viral trend.
Jimmy Kimmel’s fun poke at the Gerwig snub at the Oscar 2024 nominations
However, when informed that it involves having takeout after the show and victory, not before it, Gosling throws it away in frustration, giving another nod to his category of Best Supporting Actor Male’s frontrunner, Robert Downey Junior. But then he brightens up, recalling that director Greta Gerwig has the “director in the bag,” aka a promising nomination in the helming category.
In a moment of awkward eye contact, Ferreira walks up and whispers Gerwig’s nomination snub this year in the Best Director category. This results in the iconic and climactic screams by the entire troop of four, mock-horrified by the daring snub by the Academy in a lack of acknowledgement of her valuable contribution to cinema this year.
While the ladies stop screaming after the first shocked one, Kimmel and Gosling continue to do so, as some boys never grow up to be anything more than “infantile men”. The long clip, full of Easter eggs and fun jokes, marks a daring venture on Kimmel’s part, right before hosting the awards on March 10, 2024, making it a very memorable one.