Culture

“Most Films Are Awful”: Wait, Was Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes Monologue Actually Good?

It was vintage Gervais, but also quite bold.

by Jared Richards  6 January 2020
Golden Globes 2020: Ricky Gervais' opening monologue was kind of good?

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Ricky Gervais is back to host the Golden Globes for yet another year, and his whole “I don’t care and I’m cheeky” schtick is too. His opening monologue was a pretty standard ‘controversial’ set, filled with jokes about the Globes’ lack of diversity, Jeffrey Epstein and wise-cracks about all films being bad.

When Gervais was announced as the 2020 host, reaction was mixed. Given he’d hosted four times already, last year’s co-hosts of Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh felt like a fresh breath of air. Especially when you remember that Gervais made several transphobic jokes at Caitlyn Jenner’s expense when hosting in 2016, later doubling down and defending them in his Netflix special Humanity.

Gervais’ bit of being cynical is back: he began by celebrating how it was “a big year for pedophile movies”, name-dropping Surviving R. Kelly and Leaving Neverland (not movies, but sure) and The Two Popes.

He went on from there, referencing the ‘Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself’ theory, to which the audience largely groaned. “Shut up, I don’t care,” he said off-the-cuff. “I know he was your friend.”

From there, he also mentioned Epstein associate Prince Andrew, and how lots of those in the room had to “catch their own planes” there.

During an extended bit about how long The Irishman and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood are, Gervais tied together Andrew with a joke about how Leonardio DiCaprio’s date to the Once Upon… premiere was “too old” for him by the time the film ended. DiCaprio, 45, hasn’t ever dated someone above the age of 25: unlike Tom Hanks, he took the joke with a laugh.

Gervais also made a joke about the “many talented people of colour” within the entertainment industry being snubbed tonight, pointing out that it couldn’t be helped as, quite simply, the Globes are “very racist”.

Possibly most intense of all was a joke about Amazon, Apple and Disney’s exploitative labour practices.

“You say you’re woke, but the companies you work for — Amazon, Apple, Disney — if ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?”, he said.

“If you do win tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no place to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world — most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”

Finally, he ended by introducing “a couple of actors off the tele”, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Very funny!

On the plus side, he pointed out “most films are awful” and dragged Cats quite a lot. Then again, that’s exactly what your least funny friend does. It’s kind of like when someone copies the internet’s jokes and repeats it offline as loudly and smugly as possible.

Reaction, of course, was pretty mixed to the speech, with Twitter split between celebrating his call-outs, and others found it incredibly tiresome.

Either way, we’re sure Gervais doesn’t care what we think, right? Definitely not.