Lindsay Lohan Saturday Night Live Reviews: Did She Bomb On SNL?
The reviews are in for Lindsay Lohan’s March 3, 2012 hosting gig on Saturday Night Live and they’re not good. You can watch the episode for yourself. But, honestly, if you’re yet to watch, you’re not missing much.
The episode began with the monologue Lohan leaked to TMZ.com that she intended to sing. Only for there to be a last-minute change that devolved into pandering and butt-kissing, laced with staccato line delivery and poor comedic-timing. The show continued with ideas that had promise on paper, but it ended as it began… MEH. No one expected miracles, but this was pretty bad.
Lohan seemed to struggle with her lines, perhaps because of the changes. She could be seen reading, slowly, from cue cards. Entertainment Weekly notes, in a post entitled “Lindsay Lohan on Saturday Night Live: Worst host of the year?” Lohan was “mostly pushed to the background” even during her own skits, “usually appearing in unchallenging supporting roles in sketches.” And her “reliance” on cue cards became “excruciatingly clear.”
MTV News echoes the sentiment, writing: “While the crowd and cast was clearly supportive during at the top of the show, the evening’s sketches featured SNL regulars doing the comedic heavy-lifting. Lohan’s lines were noticeably few. When she did speak, she clearly read from cue cards.”
HollywoodLife.com called it “awkward,” and TheHollywoodGossip.com also declared “Meh… we expected better.”
Washington Post said “Lohan… didn’t fully reclaim her status as a young comic performer worthy of casting in major Hollywood projects.” While a TVLine critic stated: ”I was genuinely hoping she’d score some big laughs as host of this week’s Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately for the troubled actress, however, there’s only so much one can do with setups built around prison-rape jokes or the sight of Fred Armisen in drag getting repeatedly hit by a car.”
The performance was widely-panned. To the extent that Lohan used mouthpiece TMZ to do damage-control, declaring that she “didn’t bomb.” Blaming detractors for being over-critical, rather than taking full responsibility for a poor episode, a Lohan source tells TMZ: “[She] understands it wasn’t a perfect show, but she feels proud of the episode… Lindsay was excited to be back working and really missed being a part of the action… Lindsay understands people are going to bash her performance regardless but she feels she did the best she could do.”
RadarOnline.com already noted that Lohan rehearsed for three or four hours, the same amount of time as everyone else. And this was her fourth time after May 1, 2004, May 21, 2005, April 15, 2006 hosting gigs. So Lohan couldn’t deliver, even after multiple other appearances and ample rehearsal. How do you think she did?