Jimmy Kimmel celebrates below-the-line workers and zings Madame Web in workmanlike Oscars intro

In the opening 20 minutes or so of this year’s Academy Awards, host Jimmy Kimmel proved why he keeps getting gigs like this (and why he keeps getting this specific gig, since this is his fourth time doing it). Was it outrageously funny? No, not really. Was it creatively adventurous, with elaborate skits and songs? No, not at all. But was it a bomb that immediately turned the audience against him and started off the show on a terrible foot? No, thank god. It was, in the nicest way, totally serviceable.

Kimmel opened with a tiny little gag where he was in Barbie, and then he came out onstage and talked about how exciting it was to be in that room with so many talented people and all the potential they have—but he shrugged that off with a realization about how Madame Web also had a lot of potential. (It was one of only two “that movie was bad!” jokes, the other one unfairly targeted at the great Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts.)

His other jokes were fairly well-received, including an extended run where Kimmel said that Oppenheimer was the high point of Robert Downey Jr.’s career—before he corrected himself and said it was a high point. Downey then tapped on his nose, prompting Kimmel to ask if that was a drug thing or an “on the nose” thing, and Downey then motioned for Kimmel to move on. Downey himself wasn’t laughing, but everyone around him was having a good time.

He later joked that movies are so long that he had his mail forwarded to the theater during Killers Of The Flower Moon, that Cillian Murphy pronounces his name as “Killy-en” for dramas and “Silly-ann” for comedies, and that, thanks to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, actors no longer have to worry about getting replaced by AI (but they still need to worry about getting replaced by younger, more attractive actors).

Speaking of the strikes, Kimmel then highlighted the work of below-the-line crew people like truck drivers, gaffers, and grips who make movies happen but never get the spotlight like actors and writers and directors. So he brought out a bunch of IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) members, got the crowd to give them a huge standing ovation (after Kimmel himself only got a partial one earlier), and then vowed to support them in their labor negotiations with the AMPTP.

It was a positive way to end his monologue and get things started well, because nobody in that room is going to be the asshole who doesn’t stand up and clap for the people who physically make movies happen.