Oscar Show Reviews: Mostly Thumbs Down

James Cameron is ecstatic that Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker was the night's big winner

First the good news: the Adam Shankman-Bill Mechanic-produced 2010 Oscar telecast drew 14% more viewers than last year, when Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture. Whether that was because of Avatar, the Super Bowl Ratings Effect, Sandra Bullock, The Twilight Saga: New Moon's Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, and Robert Pattinson (who wasn't there), Twitter, The New Tenants' Joachim Black, the Elinor Burkett-Roger Ross Williams to-do, the rotten economy, or the John Hughes & horror movie tributes, no one can tell.

Now the not-so-good news: Reviews for the Oscar show have been mostly negative. And even the ones that weren't downright pans were at best unenthusiastic.

Tom O'Neil at Gold Derby: "The show wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't a great Oscars either. It had lots of low points, starting with that awkward opener. Didn't you feel so terribly sorry for those poor lead-acting nominees frozen in silent fear on stage as they were introduced to TV viewers, then dispatched to their seats? Then came that odd Busby Berkeley fantasia hoofed and crooned by Neil Patrick Harris donning too much glitter. Sorry, Neil: You're no Hugh Jackman."

Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times: "… [T]here was some waste and abuse, notably the opening dance number — Neil Patrick Harris and a troupe of Las Vegas-style dancers — that was meant to suggest opulent old-fashioned showbiz-as-usual, but mostly tested the clock. When the best picture award was announced, for The Hurt Locker, it was rushed and practically a postscript."

The Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein: "… [A]s far as the Oscars go, it was another huge disappointment, a colossal missed opportunity. Right from the start, the producers seemed unable to re-imagine the show as something other than a glitzy, painfully earnest version of the same cobwebby variety show we've been watching for years. I mean, there's far more inventiveness going on in ABC's Modern Family than there was on the Oscar stage last night."

Daniel Fienberg at HitFix: "The [Neil Patrick Harris] opening proved an ungainly vestigial tie to a different show. Get the young viewers excited and then kick to co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin doing a Grump [sic] Old Men routine basically introducing every member of the audience accompanied by an easy punchline. Yes, this kind of opening is an Oscar tradition, but if you don't have any material fresher than gently nudging Woody Harrelson about his appreciation for weed, why bother? Baldwin and Martin had acceptable chemistry, but in terms of delivered laughs, I found myself amused only by Martin, whose Oscar hosting turns have always amused me. The show wasn't improved by having the pair of them and it may, in fact, have required the addition of a third host outside of the Older White Male demo, something that was rumored, but never occurred."

Alan Sepinwall in the New Jersey Star-Ledger: "Still, no matter how tentative the hosts were, how odd some of the production choices were (a random montage of horror movies that seemed unclear on what the definition of a horror movie is, and in some of its choices of Oscar-winning films that were released after The Exorcist, disagreed with the introductory remarks by Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart), or how long the show ran, everything might have been okay with an even vaguely competent director.

"Instead, we got Hamish Hamilton making the wrong choice at virtually every turn."

David Zurawik's in the Baltimore Sun: "Ragged and uneven opening dialogue with Martin and Baldwin having a very hard time setting a tone thanks largely to weak, insider-ish material. I hope the telecast finds its feet fast. I'm starting to get flop sweat. Martin and Baldwin are clapping at the end of each call-out to performers in the Kodak Theatre audience — and almost no one is clapping with them. Shankman and Mechanic insisted this telecast was not going to play to the room at the expense of the home audience — and that is all this opening is doing. It is one of the worst openings I have ever seen."

Photo: Via metro.co.uk