Jimmy Kimmel will flop as the host at this year’s Academy Awards because he and other late-night comedians have lost touch with the common culture, Fox News’ Jimmy Failla said.
"Having watched him do these shows before, he's playing to half the room," the Fox Across America host said. "That's the problem."
Kimmel will host the Oscars for the third time this Sunday. The late-night talk show host is known for his politically infused jokes that favor liberal ideals at the expense of conservatives, which Failla said will work against him when trying to win over the crowd.
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"In order to be truly funny to everybody, the key thing is you can't take yourself or your positions seriously," Failla said. "It disarms whatever tension might surround the particular subject matter."
"The minute you establish that you have an angle, it makes half of your audience uncomfortable because they're questioning the intent of the joke," he added.
Failla said many other late-night hosts have gone down the same path of politicizing their jokes to push a certain ideology to the detriment of comedy, including Steven Colbert, Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah.
"People are so underwhelmed by late-night comedy, it's no longer common culture," Failla said. "It used to be a thing everybody shared and laughed at."
"Nobody shows up to the comedy show for life advice," he added. "We weren't supposed to be tasked with solving the world's problems. So we need to develop a little more self-awareness."
In order to bring comedy back to its former glory, Failla’s advice to Kimmel and other comedians is to focus on universal human interest topics, not politics.
"If you watch Colbert tonight, 80% of it's going to be bashing Republicans," Failla told Fox News. "If he inverted that and 80% of it was ‘Florida man marries Ferris wheel,’ those are the human interest stories where you can find innocent laughter as opposed to activist laughter."
