Brow Beat

Follow Friday: Not Gene Shalit

Gene Shalit on The Today Show with his glorious mustache

NBC/Wikipedia.

Not long ago, Simon Akam, writing for Slate, mourned the death of the American pun. Akam didn’t pinpoint the cause of death, but those looking for contributing factors may want to consider the 2010 retirement of film critic Gene Shalit.

For four decades at the Today Show, Shalit and his glorious moustache gave us delightfully bad puns year after year. Reviewing The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, he said it was “filled with wonders for every family—for kiddies, and for daddies, and of course, for mummies.” In Valentine’s Day, “Taylor Lautner falls for Taylor Swift—it’s a tailor-made romance!” Ba-dum-dum.

Happily for those of us who enjoy such groaners, @FakeShalit, a parody Twitter account that turns a year old tomorrow, is like the real Shalit, only more so.

He doesn’t restrict himself to big-budget Hollywood flicks—he’s also capable of great riffs on artier fare.

And @FakeShalit has an impressive knack for making entire sentences that consist mostly of the names of people involved with the film in question.

We can’t vouch for @FakeShalit’s taste in movies. But his taste in deliciously bad puns is almost unerring.

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