“As a television event, this year’s Oscars was more like an endurance test — turgid, badly directed, poorly produced and featuring an endless string of tired or wince-inducing moments from host Ellen DeGeneres.

Who would have predicted that it would have been so boring, so long, so self-involved and driven sideways into a ditch by, of all people, the beloved Ellen DeGeneres as host? As a television event, this year’s Oscars was more like an endurance test. It was a turgid affair, badly directed, poorly produced and featuring an endless string of either tired or wince-inducing moments by DeGeneres, who, by the last 30 or so minutes, seemed to have given up entirely and imploded into herself.

(…) She was spotty and flat in those early comments and then tried to spice things up by appearing in the audience not just once, not just twice but — did anyone count? — what felt like 47 times. In any case, it was too much even if she did set a Twitter record by getting a gaggle of Hollywood’s most famous together for a quick cellphone selfie. It still felt like a Samsung ad that was tricked up to feel spontaneous.

(…) DeGeneres would later change clothes — probably because it already felt like Monday to everybody anyway. She changed again — and saying it felt like Tuesday at that point would be as obvious as many of her attempts at humor. When the host is off and the show is lurching along like servants pushing rocks up a muddy mountain, you’re in a whole hell of a lot of trouble. (…) every DeGeneres’ joke about pizza or selfies or whatever she flailed at (she posed once, almost pointlessly, with an acoustic guitar) dragged out the affair. Toss in long song and dance numbers and retrospectives and you had to wonder if the Academy was still counting ballots in the back and just stalling for time.

(…) Hell, when the commercials are better than your Academy Award film nominees, something is desperately wrong.

(…) Instead, the show felt, visually, like a bag of leaden rocks. It forced viewers to endure it rather than enjoy it. (…) there used to be the assumption that the Oscars were the gold standard of awards shows and therefore must-watch television. But on this night, when there was a slog of pointless filler and the host was way, way off her game, the Oscars felt like the 23rd-best option of the night for viewing pleasure.

That wasn’t the game plan, was it? Oh, right, there clearly wasn’t a plan. Or at least not one that someone was bold enough to nix and say, “Start again, because this is a pretty important night.”

Nope, on Sunday night there was no starting again. Just the painful feeling that the show would never end.”


(Tom Goodman im Hollywood Reporter über die Oscar-Verleihung, die tatsächlich die schwächste seit ungefähr ever war)


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