Chris Rock was the funniest Oscar host I ever saw.
Mind you, I’m not talking about the performance this year’s Oscar emcee gave on the 77th Academy Awards in 2005, the only other time he’s hosted the show.
I think he was pretty good on that show, with a sharp opening monologue that offered a good mixture of political humor and show-business jokes and paved the way for ruder hosts like Ricky Gervais on the Golden Globes several years later.
The most famous moment, of course, was Rock’s riff on how Jude Law was omnipresent that year: “Even the [movies] he’s not in, if you look in the credits he made cupcakes or something.”