It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park, the movie that made realistic CGI look achievable, and Jeff Goldblum pose like a bare-chested, desirable invalid. To celebrate, last night’s Bill Hader-hosted Saturday Night Live imagined the auditions for the movie that didn’t quite work out, in the kind of retro-sketch that allows for impersonations that don’t necessarily fit anything up to the minute (Alan Alda, anyone?).
At the risk of nit-picking the veracity of a sketch that makes no serious claims on realism, not every one of these auditions would ever conceivably have happened. While No Doubt did exist as a band, they were still a couple of years away from a big enough breakthrough that Gwen Stefani would be auditioning for anything this huge (or with anything other than platinum blonde hair), and Pee-wee Herman was still shaking a certain scandal stigma that wouldn’t really leave until after Paul Reubens appeared in 1999’s Mystery Men. Still, no reason to throw those impersonations out with the metaphorical bath water. Sinbad and Jaleel White are very much of the era, and it’s nice to finally hear an Ellen DeGeneres impersonation that doesn’t rely on merely exaggerating her Southern accent; long before becoming a down-to-earth talk show host, she was a hugely successful deadpan stand-up.
Another thing to notice is that none of the celebrities is trying out for the role of Ian Malcolm. Even in fictional satire, everybody acknowledges that it could only have been Jeff Goldblum. Oh for a world in which Pearl Jam actually did the soundtrack, though.
Did these parodies dino-soar or dino-sink? Hold onto your butts as we discuss this in comments!
Image: NBC
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