This won't take long, as I don't really care to go on and on if I don't have anything nice to say. But it's time to state the shameful truth; this year's 80th Academy Award ceremony was the worst ever. It was slow. It was dull. It was boring. Jon Stewart was not a funny host, in spite of occasional chuckles from the crowd. Nobody wore a swan dress or a peacock hat, no streakers strutted their stuff in the buff , and no off the wall comments from anybody. It was polite, sedate and the TV equivalent of taking a Tylenol PM.
To ABC's credit, they really had a tough road to travel to this year's Oscars. The writer's strike made everything last minute. They only had 11 days to put the show together. The nominated films were almost uniformly dark, dreary and not box office winners. But put all that together, and it was still unforgivable to have not one...but three, count 'em, three magical Disney musical numbers for the movie Enchanted. All of them were outstanding opportunities for bathroom or telephone breaks. I mean really, didn't anybody learn anything since Snow White danced with Rob Lowe? They even spoofed it in this year's O's and then went and did the weird ball room dance number thing all over again.
You know the show was dull when the top topics for the evening for fellow bloggers, friends and sisters consisted of a) Is Javier Bardem short? and b) Does Josh Brolin have an inordinantly big head? and c) If Martin Scorcese's eyebrows were removed from his head would they be able to exist on their own?
For me, the Academy Award ceremony is the most important television show of the year. But this year it just became a colorful HD background while I flipped through the Sunday Times. It will be weeks before I recover from the disappointment!
Lisa had it right in her blog. The best thing about this year's Oscar ceremony was the thrilling animated open. After that, it went downhill fast. It is not any wonder that the ratings were the lowest ever recordered.
