Old-Fashioned Oscars Draw Lukewarm Reviews

Baldwin and Martin wow, but show somehow lacked fun
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 8, 2010 7:32 AM CST
Old-Fashioned Oscars Draw Lukewarm Reviews
Host Alec Baldwin, right, and Steve Martin are seen on stage at the 82nd Academy Awards Sunday, March 7, 2010, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Were the 82nd Academy Awards any good? The critics are split, but, hey, that’s the point. “We all think we know how to do a better Oscar night,” writes Hank Steuver of the Washington Post. “When really all we know are recipes for queso dip.” Here’s what people are saying:

  • The awards were “businesslike, and only a teensy bit boring,” says Stuever, though 10 best picture nominees was too many. “It was like a kindergarten graduation ceremony.”

  • Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin “were, as expected, the best hosts the show has had in years,” says Mary McNamera of the LA Times. But the show dragged, even though the speeches were so short. “One wondered what sort of threat had been made at the nominees luncheon.”
  • “Mostly, it was a repudiation of last year’s recession-tainted show,” observes Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times. This was like a “Hollywood stimulus package,” a super-sized, expensive celebration of film.
  • But that old-fashioned glitz annoyed Nicole LaPorte in The Daily Beast. “After months-long promises it would be more populist, more fun, more relevant” the awards “were anything but.”
(More Academy Awards stories.)

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