Oscar 2010: Unfunny People

Another Oscar ceremony has come and gone, and I don't know what that has left as bad a taste in my mouth as this one. It wasn't any of the winners or losers that bothered me--I didn't find any of the winners egregiously unfair--but the show itself. What a turkey!

As predicted here, The King's Speech won the top prize, but it didn't win nearly as many Oscars as some guessed. It got Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay, and if a film is going to win four those are the ones you want. The Social Network picked up three, while Inception also won four technical categories.

As the show wore on, though, it had a tedious quality. All of the acting winners had won at least two highly visible awards. I thought Hailee Steinfeld might stop Melissa Leo's streak, even if to prevent the latter from making another rambling acceptance speech, but it was not to be. If anything, Leo was at her most scatter-brained, dropping the F bomb and performing some strange bit of comedy with presenter Kirk Douglas. Leo has won almost every award in sight--could she have at least organized her thoughts?

When the awards become like this--no surprises--we turn to the show itself for some entertainment. But it was not to be this year. The producers decided to cast two likable actors in the role of hosts, Anne Hathaway and James Franco, and some were excited about the change. But it was a disaster.

Hathaway, for all her talent and enthusiasm, is not a comedian, and really didn't show much ability to think on her feet. She had a song that seemed completely pointless--did Hugh Jackman really bail at the last minute, and, if so, do we care? But the villain of the night was James Franco, whose entire career seems to be some kind of performance piece. He appeared bored, distracted, or, as some have speculated, stoned. He made some very unfunny things, such as saying he got a text from Charlie Sheen, and making a Beavis and Butt-head like joke about the titles of Winter's Bone and Rabbit Hole.

Franco brought nothing to the proceedings. He's not a comedian, he's not a singer, so what was he there for? He's getting killed throughout the media today, so we can be sure he will never host another awards show. My guess is that the producers of this show will not be asked back, and whoever takes the gig will hire a comedian. It may not be an old-timer, like Billy Crystal (who was greeted with a standing ovation, perhaps out of a hope that he would take over?) but there are younger comedians who can do the job. From his brief appearance, Russell Brand might be a good man for the gig.

Beyond the bad hosting, there was also bad writing. The insert-the-hosts-into-nominated-films gag, which Crystal made famous, seemed labored, and a bizarre bit involving auto-tuning flopped. Because the hosts weren't comics, there was no monologue, nor were there any running gags, which Crystal was so good at. It didn't help to resurrect clips from Bob Hope (and an impersonator), again reminding viewers how it's done better.

There were some things I liked. The clip segment to introduce the Best Picture nominees was novel and well done, but having it "scored" to The King's Speech seemed to give it away. In the long run, it was the speeches of winners that made the evening barely tolerable. David Seidler, the writer of The King's Speech, made the best one, and Randy Newman, winning for Best Song, had the funniest. Leo made the worst, and Colleen Atwood, winning for Best Costume, read directly from a piece of paper (but at least she wrote something).

I'll leave it to the fashion people to decide who looked good and who didn't. I know that that is the reason many people watch, and those postmortem fashion police shows are popular. Believe me, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, or any other of the female presenters could wear burlap sacks for all I care.