Every year, the Internet seems to erupt with the sentiment that we've just seen the worst Academy Awards ceremony ever. I'm never sure what folks are expecting.
It's an awards show. 70% of it is giving awards and most of that is stuff like Best Cinematographer which is never going to be entertaining no matter how it's staged or scripted. I'm not saying those folks don't deserve their place in the spotlight because they do. In fact, there's a sense in which those are most important awards since they're the life-changers. Meryl Streep's third Oscar is not going to enhance her clout or the respect she receives. It may not even make her any more "in demand." But that unknown guy up there thanking everyone for some tech award…you may well be looking at the best moment of his life and the one that alters things for the better.
Some years, because of what's out there and what's nominated and what wins, the awards aren't all that exciting and there's nothing the telecast's producers can do to change things. When you look back at the truly memorable moments of these shows, most of them are things that were beyond the producers' control — someone crying, someone saying something outrageous, someone doing one-handed push-ups. Not stuff that can be controlled.
As for the entertainment-type elements, I thought the Christopher Guest piece was funny but not much else was. What the whole show needed was something unpredictable. I love Billy Crystal but I think I love him less as an Oscar host than in any other role he fills…and less and less each time he does it. The man had lost his capacity in that job to surprise. Did anyone not know we were going to get the opening montage with him in all the current movies? The opening medley of song parodies? The plug for his next movie disguised as a joke about plugging his next movie? Him doing Sammy Davis? And all those little remarks that flow from the premise that the most important thing about the event was that he was back hosting it again? This year, it felt like an impersonator doing Billy Crystal.
He was a great host in the past. If he does it again — and I bet he will, though maybe not for a few more years — he needs to offer us something we haven't seen before and we care about. Because depending on how the nominators nominate and how the voters vote, it can be a pretty hard show to drag across the finish line.