In which no-one agrees with Jonathan Bogart…
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[4.42]
Jonathan Bogart: Akon’s last big hit was also a joke; unfortunately, the humor was lost on people who were outraged, outraged that he and Guetta were calling a woman a sexy bitch after having just said that they were trying not to be disrespectful. Of course, hollering “that was the JOKE!” at your computer screen doesn’t get you anywhere, so I’ll happily take the small, year-later vindication given here: yes, Akon’s in on the joke, and yes, he’s having a ball poking fun at himself. (Now if we could just do something about his slow jams.) The SNL boys do fine, the jokey structure’s a little overdone, but the sheer wide-eyed glee makes the laughter catch in my throat — hey, yeah, sex is awesome. Sometimes you forget.
[9]
Jer Fairall: Well, this just gets it all wrong. What should be funny, and even sorta sweet, here is the mixture of bravado and vulnerability that goes along with a young male’s experiences with sex that still carries with it the thrill of novelty along with anything else. And of course, why not project that enthusiasm and immaturity onto the kind of libidinous R&B track that boasts so professionally of its own prowess, the kind whose ubiquity makes your average horny little nerd feel all the more inadequate as a result? Lonely Island prove their witlessness by not even recognizing what they’ve got here, resorting to musty Married…With Children bits like “best 30 seconds of my life” and “she put a bag on my head” halfway through this thing’s sub-three-minute running time. “[It]’s only funny when the sap’s got dignity”, a greater comic mind than any at work here once said; modify to that to the sap needing to believe they’ve got dignity and understand why the cruel embarrassment tossed in here for easy yuks derails the whole thing.
[3]
Anthony Easton: Painfully unfunny.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: Another spot-on genre pastiche. But where are the jokes this time? Or at least, good jokes. Hey, I’d even settle for jokes that work outside the context of the video.
[4]
Chuck Eddy: As a parody of one of the prevailing commercial r&b trends of our time — hits about “booties” and “boobies” by males who come off approximately as expert and emotionally developed as 12-year-old Buttheads who just stumbled upon their first porn site yesterday — this had real timeliness potential. And for the first half or so, the intentional stupidity does make me chuckle. But once they’re humping manure, they’re sounding even dumber than they’re trying to. Don’t get the “racist” joke, either, though I suppose that’s just meant to be a non sequitur. Akon crooning “if you’ve had sex in the last 30 minutes you’re qualified to sing with me” is silly enough, maybe. Still, no “I’m On A Boat.”
[6]
David Moore: I’ll go on record as thinking the chorus is funny. But the “we can’t really rap!” shtick is one of the few stupid things these guys do that doesn’t make me laugh. This song misses an easy mark by being so obsessively self-conscious about its conceit that it doesn’t let the group do anything with it. “I’m on a Boat” works to the extent that you can take it partially seriously (damn, I wish I were on a boat right now) but here all of the underlining becomes the text. Which is a shame, since Akon has basically done songs whose choruses are this direct already. This could have been a halfway decent idiotic sex song instead of a bad song about idiots having sex.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: Akon sings his parts as well as usual, but the rest is just very annoying, and I can’t imagine who would find this amusing.
[2]
Al Shipley: Usually in this space I’d lament how repetitive and irritating Akon’s hooks have become in recent years. But I’ll let him off the hook, not just because he’s parodying himself but because the guys he’s doing it with are suffering their own case of diminishing returns, as every ironic rap anthem gets more predictable and ham-fisted than the last.
[4]
Alfred Soto: I thought the chorus was “I just ate Pez,” and why not: the actual rhymes are brain-dead enough. You mean Akon couldn’t afford Weird Al Yankovic?
[5]
John Seroff: As a three minute SNL sketch, “I Just Had Sex” is above average. As a song, novelty or not, it goes from bad to insufferable after about three plays. Feel free to cut and paste this note for every Lonely Island song ever.
[3]
Mallory O’Donnell: Is it effective social satire or just another manifestation of how guilelessly crude our culture has become? Does it matter? Nope. Still counts.
[6]
Zach Lyon: I love them, and I have since Stork Patrol (I’m that cool) but this is sort of well-worn territory. Most of it sounds like a high-budget version of a Lonely Island tribute video some frat guys would put together in a week.
[4]