USA TODAY US Edition

Jimmy Fallon:

How’d he do as host? Review

- ROBERT BIANCO

In Jimmy Fallon, the Golden Globes may have finally found its perfect host. Like the Globes, Jimmy Fallon is a creature of NBC — the network that took him out of Saturday Night Live and gave him The

Tonight Show, and that took the Globes out of their deservedly humble Los Angeles beginnings and turned them into a media behemoth. Like the Globes, Fallon has made his show a celebrity safe harbor, where stars know there’s a lot of fun to be had and little of consequenc­e at risk. And like the Globes, Fallon is very good at being eager to please.

The big difference? Unlike the Globes, it’s almost impossible not to like Fallon. Yes, he often seems to be trying awfully hard to be liked — but darned if he doesn’t succeed.

Between the nominated movies and TV shows and this year’s election, he certainly had plenty of material for a monologue — once he got past a technical problem that forced him to fill time while producers replaced a broken teleprompt­er. There were jokes about The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, delivered as a Chris Rock imitation. (“No one’s going to thank O.J.”) There were gentle jabs at Ben Affleck, Donald Trump, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Vladimir Putin, with “gentle” being the operative word. If you loved the blistering attacks Ricky Gervais used to launch against the crowd and the Globes themselves — well, this was the polar opposite.

Before the monologue, though, came the now-inevitable taped opening sketch, an amusing starpacked musical salute to La La Land that included a Stranger Things rap, Fallon singing his on lyrics to the Globe-winning City

of Stars (“They’ve been getting drunk since 3”) and Fallon dancing with Justin Timberlake.

It was only a brief dance, of course, but that was also fitting, as the host of the Globes is seen only briefly on the show — which is only barely a show. Typically, there are no production numbers to introduce or lead; no big comedy routines to do midway through the show; no special segments to introduce, other than a perfunctor­y tribute to Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. (The Globes generally don’t have an “in memoriam” segment.)

There was one truly lovely moment: Viola Davis’s clearly heartfelt tribute to Meryl Streep, winner of the Cecil B. DeMille career achievemen­t award, followed by Streep’s powerful, politicall­y charged acceptance speech. Mostly, though, it’s just presenter/award/acceptance speech — repeated 26 times, until they run out of Globes.

Which means that, after spending less than 10 minutes opening the broadcast, Fallon was off, returning for a few seconds after most commercial breaks to introduce the next presenters.

That included, by the way, showing up after the first break to repeat the introducti­on of Hugh Grant that the announcer had just messed up.

Think of it as the perfect Globes moment.

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 ??  ?? Jimmy Fallon makes his debut as host for the 74th Golden Globe Awards Sunday night.
Jimmy Fallon makes his debut as host for the 74th Golden Globe Awards Sunday night.

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