It may only be a “Saturday Night Live” parody, but can we please make “Grouch” happen?
Guest host David Harbour starred as “Sesame Street” curmudgeon Oscar in the parody of Todd Phillips’ “Joker” — or, as the voiceover said, “From the studio that brought you ‘Joker’ and the twisted minds at Sesame Workshop comes the next gritty antihero origin story.”
In the fake trailer for “Grouch,” we first see Oscar picking up trash bags with Grover (Chris Redd) while in a typically foul mood. Soon he’s donning green face makeup, aiming a pistol at the camera and crawling into his distinctive trash can. “If everyone calls you trash, if everyone treats you like trash, why don’t you just become trash?” he says.
The clip also features a host of familiar “Sesame Street” characters in gritty, hyper-realistic fashion: newscaster Guy Smiley (Bowen Yang) reports for ABCDEFG News; the Count (Beck Bennett) adds up pills, Cookie Monster begs on the street for treats, Big Bird (Heidi Gardner) works as a peep-show dancer and Elmo (Melissa Villaseñor) is arrested for selling crack — though he’s convinced he’s only nabbed for being Mexican. (Who knew?)
And don’t get us started on what happens to poor Ernie and Bert in an urban alleyway.
“Would you do me one favor, would you call me the Grouch?” Harbour’s Oscar says toward the end of the trailer in a direct shout-out to Joaquin Phoenix’s turn as Joker. But the new film is brought to you by the letter R — “for graphic violence, nudity and potty mouth.”
Watch the parody above.