Every year I look forward to the Academy Awards show. I should have reversed direction this year and looked backward to previous shows that were actually entertaining.
This was the first time I fast-forwarded through much of the interminable three-plus hours, because I wanted the damn thing to end so I could do something enjoyable.
Whoever came up with the atrociously bad concept for the 2021 Academy Awards should be drummed out of Hollywood forever.
It wouldn't take me long to Google who that person (or people) was. But I found the show so uninteresting, I can't summon up the energy to learn who produced this yawner.
It's difficult for me to decide what was the worst thing about the show, so I'll just list some of the things that turned me off in no particular order.
-- No production numbers. The nominated songs just got a few seconds of play rather than a full production featuring the singer of them.
-- Few clips from the films. It was incredibly stupid to not show, say, the costumes that led to a Costume Design nomination, instead having the camera linger on the nominee while the presenter talked about them. Hey, how about showing clips from the movies?
-- More ranting about no clips. Ditto with makeup. Ditto with sound editing. Ditto with almost every award aside from Best Picture, Best Animated Feature, and maybe a few others. Again, it was crazy to have the presenter talk about the sound nominees rather than letting us hear what the movie sounded like.
-- Lack of humor. With no host possessing comedic talent, there were no moments that even elicited a smile from me, much less a laugh.
-- Unlimited acceptance speech time. In the past, the best part about most acceptance speeches was hearing the music start playing that signaled "stop talking." This year, there seemed to be no limit to the speeches, so the boredom went on... and on... and on.
-- People of color got bad deal. Lots of BIPOC nominees won awards. Unfortunately, they won them on the absolutely worst Academy Award show ever, during which I'm confident many viewers turned the boring show off, or skipped through the uninteresting parts (most of the three hours).
-- Best actress got little time. Frances McDormand, the most quirkily interesting person in the show, only spoke briefly after she won Best Actress and the show was past its three hour scheduled length. Meanwhile, script writers and other lesser award winners blabbed on forever at the beginning of the show.
-- Dumb attendee game. I would have much preferred listening to Frances McDormand instead of suffering through the "name that song" game where nominees in attendance were asked to say whether a song had been nominated for an award or something else. I've forgotten the something else because I fast-forwarded through most of this part of the show once I saw how bad it was.
-- Audience came last. The whole show reeked of a Hollywood insider focus rather than entertaining the viewing audience. Way too much self-congratulating and way too little concern with the public who pay the bill for movies through ticket buying and streaming purchasing.
-- Humanitarian award recipient missed out. In the past I've watched every minute of the Academy Awards show because most of it was interesting. This year, the show was so boring, I fast-forwarded through the humanitarian award to get to the end of this nightmare more quickly.
-- Setting was completely forgettable. I'd heard the show was going to be in Union Station and somewhere else. Wherever it was, that place was so bland, it added nothing to the already blah production.
(For a real review of the Academy Award show, which echoes some of my points, check out the New York Times story, "The Covid-19 Oscars: Not Masked but Still Muffled.")
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