You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Academy Awards.
My take?
Good. Not great. Just OK. Long. At times – even boring.
Ellen did a good job. Not a great job. She played it safe. She seemed to be moving in slow motion. I expected mor RAT A TAT TAT.
It was joke about the rain that only made sense to Californians and then it was 4 lanes of traffic merging into 3.
It was 3 hours of what are you waiting for.
Last year the buzz was all about Seth Macfarlane. Some said he was too risky, too rough on the celebrities, too crude for such a big audience?
This ain’t Family guy, they argued.
But the Oscars wanted a younger demographic last year, so they brought in a cruder, ruder, quicker, angrier wit.
He rocked the boat, and upset the apple cart and called celebrities out.
It was daring and raw and sometimes uncomfortable.
That’s like having a birthday party and then calling the birthday boy fatso and stupid and asking about his mistress.
It’s arguably inappropriate.
So this year they wanted safer, less pit bull, less acerbic and it got Ellen.
Regardless of who hosts, America is all in when it comes to the Oscars. The numbers were huge, like NFL playoff football huge.
Ellen was fine. She made me laugh. She just was tamer than I thought she would be.
I’ve seen her stand up and she is quick and can be edgy.
At Sunday’s Oscars, I felt like they wanted to paint the room white and get out without a lot of controversy. Let the performance shine and get out-of-the-way. By and large a decent plan.
Was it a counter balance to last year’s rough jokes that offended some stars? Probably. Ellen stayed in the vanilla pudding middle of the road.
And that is OK too.
There were interesting moments like the group selfie that was re-Tweeted a record number of times.
I enjoyed the pizza bit. In case you missed it, a pizza delivery kid enters the theater and suddenly Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford are taking slices out of his box. Ellen starts passing the hat to collect for the food. It was funny. And reportedly not pre-planned.
Musically, the Oscars shined. U2 was awesome and the guy with the hat singing happy was good too.
I think the Oscars problems are bigger than the host. I think the number of categories is the issue.
Costume design and sound engineering and popcorn cooking pressure technology? I am not saying these are not valuable categories, but in life, sometimes, you gotta trim the fat.
Best foreign short costume? HUH?
Get rid of it. Tell me about it in a face book post.
And there it is. The problem with the Oscars, the problem it has always had, is it is too damn long.
It took three hours to get to Best Actor, Best Actress and Best film.
It was a slow boat to China the whole night, and then suddenly these 3 awards, all in a row, bang, bang, bang. Wam bam thank you mam. On the East coast it’s close to midnight. People have to get up in the morning, right?
I’ll continue to watch because I am a student of film. But it won’t bother me if they make it two hours next year. Make it 1 hour and hand out fruit roll ups. I’m good with that. Less is more, Oscars.
If Meryl Streep does win, and she goes more than a minute, I’d play the music and get her off the stage. Electrically buzz her with a cattle prod. Open the trap door, give her the hook, keep things moving.
You wanna be tough?
Cut down on the speeches where you thank God and Country and some unknown rebellious cause in Latin America.
The Oscars are too long and not exciting enough. Fix them or we’ll stand as one and probably watch them just like we do every year.
Life’s Crazy™