Academy of Motion Picture Tedium: Was This the Worst Oscars Ever?

Just a few quick words about last night's experiment in tedium that was the 83rd Annual Academy Awards.

Over the years, the Oscars have gotten the (rightful earned) reputation for being a bloated, boring telecast of an awards show. Overblown and hyperbolic, the Academy Awards have often represented a largely three-hour-plus snoozefest, apart from Billy Crystal's memorable opening monologue/montages and some occasional upsets.

But this year's Oscars broadcast, hosted by James Franco and Anne Hathaway, might just go down in the history books as the Worst Oscars broadcast ever.

Painfully awkward, unfunny, and sluggish, last night's awards ceremony dragged on for three and a half hours with barely a laugh thrown in. As The King's Speech rather predictably swept through the awards categories (and I say that as someone who was a devotee of the film), the entire affair seemed to be a deflated mess of a show, a bizarre mix of history lesson, stage elements, auto-tuned music videos, and kids singing at exactly the moment everyone wanted to stream out of the cavernous Kodak Theatre auditorium.

When poor Kirk Douglas gets the biggest laughs of the evening as he's uncomfortably trotted up to the podium to announce the Best Supporting Actress winner, it's a sign that something's wrong in Hollywood, and Hathaway and Franco seemed at times to be alternately bored (Franco), overly peppy (Hathaway), or as though they were hosting Saturday Night Live again.

While the two seemed game enough at first, as the evening wore on, their expressions drooped considerably. Jokes about this being a youth-centric Oscars broadcast hit close to home. Elements such as the previously mentioned auto-tune music video, the hackneyed Inception "homage" gambit, etc. all seemed to scream the Academy's intention to make this the most accessible and "fun!" Oscars ever for the young'uns. How wrong they were, as more consideration seemed to be spent on Hathaway's numerous costume changes than in making the telecast, well, funny. Or even remotely entertaining.

Yes, there were some genuinely entertaining moments within the tediousness. I thought that The King's Speech screenwriter David Seidler gets the award for the best speech of the evening. (Colin Firth is the runner-up here.) Melissa Leo, who took home the Oscar for Supporting Actress even after those campaign ads, had the most bizarre acceptance speech of the evening, though her historic F-bomb was perhaps the most unscripted moment of the entire night. (The same can't be said for Best Actress Natalie Portman, who thanked everyone involved with Black Swan, including the camera operators. Sweet? Perhaps, but also a little calculated.)

I had thought that no one was going to get booted offstage before they finished, so why did the director try to cut off--off all people--verbose Aaron Sorkin, who won for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network and the producers of said film, who won Best Picture?!? Yes, the show was running 30 minutes over, but perhaps they would have been better to scrap some of the needless "theme" elements peppered throughout the broadcast, especially as the winners of the Governor's Award were trotted out on stage to wave rather than, you know, actually say anything on-screen.

Me, I'm just lucky that I TiVo'ed the ceremony and started over an hour and a half late, so I could skip through the commercials and over some of the dullness of this boring monstrosity. As for the Academy, they'd do best to rethink just who can pull off hosting duties on Oscars night. I hear Ricky Gervais might be available...