The video: Hosting "Saturday Night Live" this weekend for the first time since 1996, Jim Carrey got people talking with a skit that parodies the Oscar-contender film Black Swan. (See clip below.) Carrey sent up Mila Kunis' role as the sexy, inhibition-free ballerina who undermines the movie's tightly wound protagonist (Natalie Portman). Revisiting his roots in physical comedy, Carrey gobbled up birdseed, stuck gum in the ear of Bill Hader's choreographer character, and generally carried on.
The reaction: The sketch made "some good observations... mostly about Vincent Cassel's character, 'the world's only straight French choreographer,'" says David Sims at The A.V. Club. But Carrey overshadowed any comic insights, "flopping around maniacally as the black swan, and while I liked him baying for crumbs, the joke was tired almost immediately." I disagree, says Mike Ryan at Movieline The comic "brought his A-game" to a sketch "reminiscent of... [his] prime during the late ’90s." Watch Jim Carrey ham it up in tulle: