After months of speculation, weeks of predictions and several days of pointless PR stunts for Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest vehicle (soon-to-be-flop “The Dictator”), the Oscars finally arrived on Feb. 26. As always, it came loaded with surprises, disappointments and plenty of opportunities for bathroom breaks.
The show started off with host Billy Crystal’s usual shtick: a montage featuring Crystal in several scenes from nominated movies followed by a few jokes and a song-and-dance number. While Crystal himself improved over the evening (taking some nice swipes at Hollywood and the Republican race), the entire opening fell flat. As hard as it is to believe, Justin Bieber showing up in a parody of “Midnight in Paris” isn’t all that funny.
Throughout the first half of the show, Martin Scorsese’s family-friendly feature “Hugo” dominated the technical awards, taking home wins for Best Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, before pulling one of the night’s biggest upsets and robbing “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” of its much-deserved Visual Effects award.
Meanwhile, it seems Crystal and the show’s writers and producers didn’t have much up their sleeves, as we were forced to endure several pointless montages (including one that inexplicably placed “Twilight” in the middle of classic, critically acclaimed films), a mediocre Christopher Guest skit and a “been there, done that” Cirque Du Soleil performance. None of these were by any means bad, but it’s all the more disheartening when one realizes that the Muppets were not allowed to perform. That alone was probably the night’s biggest travesty.
On the other hand, the presentation of the awards and the subsequent speeches made for some endearing moments. Presenting the award for Best Visual Effects, Emma Stone poked fun at Ben Stiller’s past Oscar stunts (e.g. dressing himself up in full Na’vi attire to commemorate “Avatar”). The cast of “Bridesmaids” shined with funny banter and an impromptu Scorsese drinking game.
Not surprisingly, expected winners Octavia Spencer (Best Supporting Actress), Christopher Plummer (Best Supporting Actor) and Jean Dujardin (Best Actor) gave memorable, heartfelt speeches. 82-year-old Plummer, now the oldest winner for an acting award, turned to his Oscar and delivered one of the evening’s best quotes: “You’re only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life?”
The biggest laughs of the show came from a segment in which Crystal tried to read the minds of several audience members, reading out camera directions for Scorsese and drunken gibberish for Nick Nolte. And after 84 years, the Academy finally realized it was time to hold off any applause during the In Memoriam segment until the end, so as to avoid those awkward moments where a big-name star gets a standing ovation and a little-known costume designer is rewarded with silence.
As with most Oscar ceremonies, there was one big upset (Meryl Streep winning Best Actress over favorite Viola Davis) and a handful of surprises (the aforementioned “Apes” robbery and the visually rich “The Tree of Life” not winning for Cinematography), but not much more. As expected, the black-and-white silent film “The Artist” took home Best Picture and Director (in addition to Actor, Costume Design and Original Score) and everyone went home relatively happy.
In a way, the Oscars this year were much like the movies themselves. Very little stood out as spectacular or terrible; instead, for the most part, the show remained safe and pleasant. While there’s nothing wrong with that, one does hope that more challenging fare throughout 2012 will make for a slightly more interesting ceremony next year, for better or for worse.
