So, the Oscars Totally Happened...

At long last, we may put this awards season to bed. It was about halfway through this year’s telecast when I realized just how happy I would be when this whole ordeal was over. Even if my favorite film of 2010 (The Social Network) won the big prize, I still would have been more relieved than happy when the telecast came to an end. I have a handful of problems with how the Academy Awards went down, from the winners to the show itself, but above all I'm glad that starting today I no longer have to care about who's going to win what. We once again have an absolutely clean slate, and I'm ready to move forward. After all, Take Me Home Tonight opens on Friday.

Let's start with the obvious: The King's Speech winning all the top prizes. It was obvious the show was going this way when they presented the Best Director to Tom Hooper earlier than they normally do. Personally, I was a bit stunned the Academy would tip its hand so early. Going into the ceremony, it was clear that if Hooper had won Best Director, then The King's Speech would surely win it all. If David Fincher won Best Director for his work in The Social Network, then Best Picture would still be in doubt. The Oscars decided to ruin the ending far too soon.

What's worse is that choosing Hooper’s film in both these categories is a bit too safe for my blood. Don't get me wrong, The King’s Speech remains one of my favorite movies of the year. One of the main problems with awards season is that it makes me start to hate movies I otherwise love. This is a bit of an overstatement, but the fact that it swooped in and took away the awards that Fincher and his probable masterpiece so richly deserved makes me resent it ever so slightly. Again, it’s a fantastic film with a great script and terrific performances. No more and no less.

My main complaint with The King’s Speech winning Best Director is best articulated by Scott Tobias, the film editor for The A.V. Club. Several days ago he tweeted the following:

This is not necessarily a knock on the film as a whole. A couple tweets later he clarified that he also quite liked The King’s Speech. The main problem is that Tom Hooper is not what made the film great. It’s David Seidler’s script and the performances of Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush that make it the great little film that it is. Hooper’s direction is certainly good, but there are many directors who could have done an equal job with the material. Meanwhile, David Fincher might be the most important part of what made The Social Network the most important film of last year. His film is the result of greatness being created. The King’s Speech is greatness being observed.

Any real complaining or foot-stomping would be ridiculous, though. There are many weaker films than The King’s Speech that have won Oscars. This is simply the result of awards season politics as usual; something the Weinsteins have been masters at for a long, long time. In 1998, their film Shakespeare in Love stole the Oscar away from Saving Private Ryan. Now they’ve stolen one from The Social Network. It is what it is. Complaining too loudly about it would only drive me to madness. Time will likely prove that Fincher’s film is superior and far more important. As great as The King’s Speech is, it could never be as good as The Social Network. Few films can be.

The victory of The King’s Speech came at the end of a show that just kind of came and went without any excitement. There were no true surprises all night; the lone exception being the Original Score award going to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. There was not a notable upset all night, and when that is the case it only serves to hurt the overall show. The entire experience felt like we were simply going through the motions.

At the front if it all was the hosting duo of Anne Hathaway and James Franco, and by that I mean Hathaway hosted while Franco just kind of watched and giggled along. Some have called this the worst Oscar broadcast of all time. I doubt that. I thought the show started relatively well, but it didn’t take long before it all settled down and we were stuck in the usual muck. I didn’t think this year’s show was unusually bad. I felt like it was the same laborious exercise in self-congratulation that we get every year.

The only thing that was truly off about it was Franco. Don’t get me wrong; I love the man. I think he’s one of the best, most charming young actors we have today. There’s little doubt in my mind he could be a terrific host for something like the Oscars. Yet for some reason he just didn’t feel like it last night. In a way, that’s even more disheartening. If I were an Oscar host, I’d rather be spectacularly bad at it than apathetic about the whole ordeal. Hathaway was doing all she could to help the show out, while Franco was doing all he could to be a non-presence.

After last year, when the voters took an actual risk by giving the Oscar to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, this year can only feel like a sizable step in reverse. Some of the changes to this year’s show came off as silly rather than inspired, the hosts never clicked, and the awards went to all the usual suspects. I don’t feel happy about what happened, but I can’t quite get myself too worked up about it. What happened happened, but above all I’m just thrilled that we can finally be done with all this nonsense. My opinion on this year’s Academy Awards can best be summed up in a phrase that has been uttered many a time over the years: I’m not mad. I’m disappointed.