Golden Globes 2010 (Golden Globe Awards / © HFPA)
"Before Sunday night's Golden Globes ceremony, host Ricky Gervais was promising a gloves-off performance," writes Brian Logan in The Guardian. 'There were about five things [the producers] didn't like in rehearsal,' he boasted. 'I said I wouldn't do them — but I'm going to. It's live. They can't stop me.' By his words so must we judge him. Was this the no-holds-barred comic performance he told us to expect?"
Logan doesn't quite think so, complaining that Gervais' "trademark selfregard [is] wearing very thin. And so too here, where egotistical material about The Office — and, worse, his penis — made a duff start. When will he learn that his spoof self-absorption is as obnoxious as the real thing?"
The Hollywood Reporter, for its part, called Gervais' performance "toothless," despite remarks such as "one thing that can't be bought is a Golden Globe. Officially. I'm not going to do this again, anyway." Gervais then added that if you were to buy a Globe, the man to contact would be Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Brian Logan adds that Gervais did "pull some punches," e.g., "joking about Mel Gibson's drinking is one thing – but off the leash, Gervais would surely make hay with Gibson's anti-Semitism too." Julianna Margulies, for her part, didn't make any cracks about drinking or anti-Semitism, opting instead to thank CBS for believing in the "ten o'clock drama." Margulies won the best actress in a television series (drama) Golden Globe for The Good Wife.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
Always a good show every year.
The Golden Globes should get an Oscar for best set decoration.