No Award for This Year’s Oscars

This year, for the first time in over seven years, I lost my annual Oscar pool. Needless to say, I found the Academy Awards a bit upsetting. So forgive me if this review of the Oscars comes across as a little less-than-objective. But then again, I’m a film critic: it’s my job to be opinionated.

The recent Academy Awards belonged to the comedians. You couldn’t tell it from the actual awards — the Academy still loves their dramatic roles — but the highlights of this past Sunday’s show belonged to the funnymen. Jerry Seinfeld’s appearance added some necessary oomph to a first half that was otherwise blah, and even host Ellen Degeneres was relatively entertaining despite the lifeless script she was given. The most entertaining part of the night was clearly Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly’s musical take on how comedians always get shafted at the Oscars, proving (in a very meta way) that the Academy realizes it needs to humor to fuel its ratings, but still refuses to acknowledge its importance in film.

Other than the few flashes of comedic brilliance, the Oscars were pretty dull on the whole, and often suffered the fate of the old man trying too hard to be hip and then subsequently looking awkward when he fails. The shadow puppetry was a neat concept but added little if any value to the show, and having the animated characters in the crowd was just simply juvenile. This isn’t the MTV Awards. For an awards show that is supposed to celebrate excellence in film-making, the montages were relatively poorly-edited, and there was very little excitement in general during the broadcast, even when the major awards were being announced.

The Oscars weren’t all bad (though they could have been so much better if the Academy realized that Dreamgirls was a mediocre film at best) however: it’s not every day you see “too-hot-for-a-sixty-year-old” Helen Mirren crack a joke about Queen Elizabeth’s hairstyle. Canadian film The Danish Poet was the best animated film, feature or short, of the year, so seeing it win an Oscar was quite satisfying. And of course, Marty finally getting his Oscar due brought a smile to my face, but it still doesn’t make up for the year when he lost to Kevin Costner.

So sure, the Oscars were entertaining at times, but they definitely failed to reflect that fantastic year of film that was 2006. And I didn’t win the Oscar pool, so obviously the Academy got it all wrong. Next year, bring back Billy Crystal and all will be forgiven.

(This article was originally written for publication in The Woody.)