Why The 83rd Oscars Went So Wrong

1. The opening movie montage - Only Billy Crystal should be doing those, as deft comic timing is required. The whole segment, aside from the Alec Baldwin punchline, felt like one of those filmed promotional interviews from the sixties, where a local anchor would be inserted into the right half of the screen.

2. As rudderless as the S.S. Minnow - No discernible theme to hang the proceedings on, except maybe "We're Young And We're Here, Suckers!". For some reason I kept having visions of the painted elephant being washed in the pool at the climax of 1968's The Party.

3. Franco the juggler - James Franco is famously a student at both NYU and Yale. Mr. Franco, if you had papers and assignments due this week and couldn't handle the stress, there would have been considerably less stress in a last-minute bail than the mountains of angst you caused yourself on air, which translated itself to the television audience.

4. Franco the smug ass - Mr. Franco, when you accepted this Academy Award hosting gig, you needed to take a step back and realize why you love acting in, and even watching, movies in the first place. Because that's what it's all about, sir. And you'd do well to remember that without the technical-achievement people you called nerds, you would not have a job. Or if you did, all your movies would look as if they cost $1.98.

5. But hey, it wasn't all Franco's fault - I place the lion's share of the blame on telecast head writer Bruce Vilanch, a comedy veteran with almost four decades of experience writing for stars like Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, and Bette Midler. And when Crystal and Martin host the Oscars, there's no one better at putting words in their mouths, so to speak. But Vilanch is at the point now where he thinks he can turn anyone into an Oscar host. And he has. I didn't think that Hugh Jackman would be able to pull it off, but he did, thanks to his Broadway experience and charisma. Unfortunately any charisma James Franco posesses is worked up in short bursts for the movie camera, not in a live standup situation, which is essentially what the Oscars is.

6. Yet there is Hope - Both in the filmed presence of Bob Hope, and in the presence of Billy Crystal, who hosted a mini-tribute to Hope at the halfway point. A few weeks later, Billy said that he might come back, if the show was completely redesigned.

MTMG