Current:Home > StocksChainkeen Exchange-The 2024 Oscars were worse than bad. They were boring. -Finovate
Chainkeen Exchange-The 2024 Oscars were worse than bad. They were boring.
SignalHub View
Date:2025-04-09 05:25:20
The Chainkeen Exchange2024 Oscars started five minutes late and it was only downhill from there.
Perhaps that’s a little harsh for the show, which featured some truly deserving and heartwarming winners, Ryan Gosling singing “I’m Just Ken” in a bedazzled pink tux and John Mulaney doing a tight three-minute stand-up routine on “Field of Dreams."
But really, the year after Hollywood shut down with two simultaneous strikes and as new technology and economic headwinds force the entire entertainment industry to reckon with an uncertain future, how did we end up with such a bland broadcast on “Hollywood’s biggest night”?
Oscars 2024 winners:See the full list of celebrities who took home Academy Award gold
The Oscar broadcast didn’t feel like anybody's biggest night. It felt small, unimportant, skippable. It didn’t get anywhere close to the urgency or relevancy of the nominated films. Ken might be enough, but Oscar certainly isn’t.
It starts from the top. Cracking wise about celebrities getting “Oppenhammered” to lame half-hearted “Madame Web” barbs and Trump jokes, host Jimmy Kimmel could have been sleep-walking through his fourth stint as host. He was never going to walk out with some show-stopping dance number, but maybe he could have tried a little harder than he does in a nightly monologue on his ABC late night show. Some of his schtick might have made you chuckle. Most of it was your elementary school teacher’s worst nightmare − in one ear and out the other.
But perhaps the bigger problem is that 90% of Sunday’s broadcast could have happened at any Oscars (or really, any awards show) any year. The gently-jabbing jokes, the expected winners, the overlong and overwritten bits, the dull speeches − they are so generic as to be soporific.
The decision to have five former winners present each acting award, while clearly very meaningful to the nominees, was the wrong call. Each awkwardly scripted love fest stopped the momentum of the telecast in its tracks, took ages to get through and replaced what really belonged in that part of the presentation of the awards: clips of the nominated performances. We're just supposed to believe a robotic Jennifer Lawrence that Lily Gladstone was amazing in "Killers of the Flower Moon"? Show us, don't tell.
The show was far too long all around, even if starting an hour earlier than usual on Daylight Saving Sunday gave the illusion that it was shorter than normal, wrapping around 10:30 p.m. EDT. We didn't need that much Kimmel. We didn't need such long introductions for the presenters. And somehow the In Memoriam segment, always the most divisive and scrutinized moment of the night, was too short and filmed in such a way to make it hard to read the names of the late filmmakers being honored. It's the same problems every year, and yet, somehow they never learn.
The moments of the ceremony that actually stood out were the only ones that remembered what 2023 and its movies were really about. Moments like Emily Blunt and Gosling riffing on “Barbenheimer,” the summer sensation that may have saved the very act of moviegoing itself. Or Kimmel expressing solidarity for the writers’ and actors’ strikes, and the forthcoming labor negotiations of below-the-line union IATSE. And of course, Gosling’s bedazzled “Barbie” performance, a downright spectacle that easily provided the only entertaining minutes of the night.
Actors and filmmakers traffic in artifice, but awards shows are about authenticity, and it’s so hard to find those glimpses of genuine humanity amid all the glamorous Hollywood junk. But they were the other moments of the night that rose above the rote and routine. Paul Giamatti crying as he escorted his “The Holdovers” co-star Da’Vine Joy Randolph to the stage for her best supporting actress win. Robert Downey, Jr. thanking the lawyer who got him out of jail in his less celebratory season of life. The Japanese visual effects team from “Godzilla Minus One” taking the stage while clutching monstrous action figures. Jonathan Glazer, director of the chilling Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest,” calling out the violence in Gaza.
For some producers and hosts, a boring Oscars is far preferable to a bad one, and especially better than a trainwreck of a ceremony with say a slap or a wrong best picture winner announced. So perhaps all involved were pleased with such an uneventful night (even if Emma Stone won best actress just like she did the year of the “La La Land”/”Moonlight” debacle, causing flashbacks for Kimmel and the audience alike). But as ratings for awards shows dwindle, it’s worth trying just a little bit harder to try to convince people to spend their Sunday nights watching the rich and famous hand each other golden trophies.
This is Hollywood after all. These people are supposed to know how to put on a show. Otherwise why are we watching?
veryGood! (424)
Related
- Behind on your annual reading goal? Books under 200 pages to read before 2024 ends
- Less than 2 years after nearly being killed by Russian bomb, Fox’s Benjamin Hall returns to Ukraine
- Biden’s plan would raise salaries for Head Start teachers but could leave fewer spots for kids
- A Las Vegas high school grapples with how a feud over stolen items escalated into a fatal beating
- A White House order claims to end 'censorship.' What does that mean?
- Student Academy Awards — a launching pad into Hollywood — celebrate 50 years
- Utah gymnastics parts ways with Tom Farden after allegations of abusive coaching
- Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS Just Launched Its Biggest Sale Ever: Keep Up Before Your Favorites Sell Out
- John Galliano out at Maison Margiela, capping year of fashion designer musical chairs
- Anthropologie’s Black Friday Sale 2023: Here’s Everything You Need in Your Cart Stat
Ranking
- Could Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft reunite? Maybe in Pro Football Hall of Fame's 2026 class
- Retiree records bat sex in church attic, helps scientists solve mystery of species' super long penis
- Police identify man they say injured 4 in Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart shooting
- Shooting of 3 men on Interstate 95 closes northbound lanes in Philly for several hours
- Highlights from Trump’s interview with Time magazine
- An election to replace the longest-serving leader of the Netherlands gives voters a clean slate
- Ex-Trump Organization executive Jeffrey McConney chokes up on stand at fraud trial, says he's very proud of work
- Democrats who swept Moms For Liberty off school board fight superintendent’s $700,000 exit deal
Recommendation
$73.5M beach replenishment project starts in January at Jersey Shore
IRS delaying $600 payment reporting rule for PayPal, Venmo and more — again
25 killed when truck overloaded with food items and people crashes in Nigeria’s north
Officials identify man fatally shot by California Highway Patrol on Los Angeles freeway; probe opened by state AG
Civic engagement nonprofits say democracy needs support in between big elections. Do funders agree?
Why Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving: What to know about football tradition
From 'Blue Beetle' to 'Good Burger 2,' here are 15 movies you need to stream right now
Coldplay concert in Malaysia can be stopped by organizers if the band misbehaves, government says