Oscars 2024 Review

Another year, another Oscars broadcast. Once again, we had a small movie-themed costume party, because what’s the point in having an event if you celebrate it a bit? MC went as Darla from Finding Nemo, Daniela was Katniss, Denisa was Julia Child, and I was Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) from Being John Malkovich (yes, it was a costume absolutely no one recognized. But I knew who I was, and that’s all that really matters.)

The broadcast was actually surprisingly good, with only a few things to quibble about. For one thing, it started an entire hour early, which was just fantastic. It meant that when I was usually looking at the clock and thinking about an early start the next morning, and wondering just how long this was going to run over, I just enjoyed the whole thing and didn’t worry about time at all. I really hope they do that again. Jimmy Kimmel kept things moving along at a good clip, and he had plenty of jokes that were actually funny and family friendly.

I really enjoyed the actor tributes for all the acting categories, where past winners talked about current nominees and what they liked about their performances. It felt sincere, and made things a bit more real. The musical numbers were mostly good (though the Flamin’ Hot one was forgettable). Billy Eilish sang wonderfully, and the Ken number was just fantastic.

As for my Oscar picks, I went 13/23, which actually says to me that the show wasn’t a complete snoozefest, since I almost always go with the front runners. True, the big categories almost all went as planned, but I care about more than those, anyway. Seeing Emma Stone win and be so flabbergasted was heartwarming, and none of the acceptance speeches went on too long, though I did lose interest in a few of them. And for the record, I won the Oscar pool again, so I retained the Oscar the Grouch hat for another year. (Though this time there were three people in striking distance right up to the end, which made things more exciting.)

So what was bad? The biggest thing was the In Memoriam number, which featured Andrea Bocelli singing Time to Say Goodbye. If they’d stopped there, that would have been fine, but someone had the bright idea to have . . . interpretive dance in the middle of it? And then to make sure to be able to show the dancers the whole time?? So instead of actually just being able to see the people being honored and focusing on that, we couldn’t see them all that well, and dancers kept moving around and distracting me. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea. It was not.

The “banter” between the presenters was generally meh, occasionally awful (Melissa McCarthy), and rarely good (Schwarzenegger and Devito and John Cena). And they just completely ignored the earlier technical awards.

But really, those are just small things that didn’t impact my enjoyment much at all. It was a fun show, and I hope they build on some of this success again next year. (Also relieved to see my agent kept live blogging, as I always enjoy reading his commentary on all of it, especially since he’s almost always seen all of the films, some of them more than once.)