TV

“SNL” Took On the Internet’s Favorite Popcorn Bucket This Week

Ayo Edebiri and the cast sang about the weirdest movie tie-in merchandise ever

"SNL" popcorn bucket sketch

"SNL" took on the internet's favorite popcorn bucket.

By Tobias Carroll

There’s a long Saturday Night Live tradition of riffing on bizarre movie tie-in merchandise. Thirty years ago, that involved a sketch about Philadelphia action figures, the punchline being how utterly bizarre it would be to have action figures for a prestige drama like Philadelphia. This week, the show took on a distinctively shaped piece of tie-in merchandise for Dune: Part Two. In this case, though, the punchline was that the product at the heart of the sketch is entirely real.

That product? A Dune-themed popcorn bucket with an attachment shaped like a sandworm. A Kotaku headline accurately called it “the stuff of nightmares,” and several members of the film’s cast are also bewildered by the design.

The sketch followed two high school students — played by Ayo Edebiri and Marcello Hernández — whose flirtation takes a turn for the bizarre. It’s also told mostly through song, which just adds to the “What the hell am I watching?” of it all. If you thought that SNL‘s musical numbers couldn’t get any weirder than “Fully Naked in New York,” this sketch might just prove you wrong.

Perhaps the best moment of the sketch comes when the lyrics get meta. “All around the world, children will buy this/ That Dune popcorn bucket,” the cast sings. “We didn’t make this up/ This is a real thing.” When reality gets more absurd than absurdist comedy, sometimes you just have to embrace it. This sketch does it — with a catchy hook to boot.

Exit mobile version