Never not on the lookout for new ways to keep its audience engaged, Netflix has begun sourcing programming recommendations directly from Saturday Night Live sketches. On April 2, Pete Davidson made his long-awaited return to SNL, not to comment on his relationship with Kim Kardashian or his feud with Ye, but to deliver a necessary ode to the joys of “Short-Ass Movies.†Rapping during a prerecorded sketch alongside castmate Chris Redd, musical guest Gunna, and Red Rocket star Simon Rex (a.k.a. Dirt Nasty), Davidson makes the case for movies that are at most one hour and 40 minutes long. Gunna plays off his popular meme, explaining that he’s “not pushin’ P†on any movie that exceeds two hours, and the sketch reveals the striking resemblance between Rex and ’90s comedy-franchise megastar Ernest that will be burned into your brain forever. It’s a reasonable request for anyone whose declining attention span is matched only by the declining strength of their bladder.
On April 4, Netflix galloped in on a white horse and answered the call by launching a new hub dedicated solely to the “Short-Ass Movies†Davidson craves. The collection features films like Zoolander (90 minutes), Bad Trip (86 minutes), and a ton of others that, if our research is correct, won’t cause you to doze off six times before you begrudgingly resign yourself to finishing them the next day.
Unfortunately for Davidson, as he acknowledges in the sketch, if his own 2020 movie, The King of Staten Island, ever makes its way to Netflix — with its bloated run time of 136 minutes — it won’t meet this collection’s criteria.