The good news is that there weren’t any huge surprises at the Oscars. All of the awards were deserved, even Meryl Streep’s (I would have preferred Michele Williams or Viola Davis to win Best Actress).
The bad news was that the show was a bit of a drudge and instantly forgettable.
The producers made some good choices this year: 1) dropping the full-length renditions of nominated songs; 2) reshuffling the order of awards to mix in the boring ones; 3) limiting the Academy President’s drone to about 30 seconds; 4) subbing in the spectacular Cirque du Soleil for the usual big dance number snorefest; and 5) bringing in the Best of Show/A Mighty Wind cast for a skit on a studio focus group in 1939. The show was well-paced and ended relatively on-time.
The Academy used the telecast to deliver a message – “Watch our movies in a theater – not on your iPhone!”. Unfortunately, the delivering was both vague and heavy-handed, using talking heads and a pointless montage of random great film moments.
So the framework was better than in the past, but the Academy still needs to punch up this show.