 Martin's drollery keeps fast-moving Oscars on track By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Steve Martin didn't have to be wild and crazy to be hilarious, or to make Oscar night his own. Hosting Sunday's blessedly quick Academy Awards, Martin was a droll delight — as amusing as Oscar star Billy Crystal, but in an entirely different way. Where Crystal was all hard work and good humor, the more deadpan and deceptively proper Martin let his nastier jokes sneak up on you, almost mimicking the image of the perfect host. |
| He got the show off to a great start with a classic opening stand-up routine, mocking young stars, Oscar campaigns, Hollywood marriages ("It's not easy to keep a marriage going in Hollywood because, well, we sleep with so many different people."), star salaries and the show itself. Some of the barbs may have stung, but most of the crowd happily played along, particularly frequent target and good sport Julia Roberts. The longer the show lasted, the less we saw of Martin, but almost every appearance was worth the wait. Like the best hosts, he never lost an opportunity to respond to what was happening on the stage and in the crowd. When cameras caught Danny DeVito eating a carrot in the audience, Martin came out with dip. Otherwise, aside from Roberts' charming acceptance speech ("I love it up here!"), it was not a particularly exciting or emotional night, but it sure did move. Producer Gil Cates, back for his 10th show after skipping last year, presented a streamlined Oscar show, without any extraneous movie-history film salutes or production numbers. Anyone who can get the Oscars in at under 3 1/2 hours can even be forgiven for a remarkably ugly set that often made presenters look like they were standing inside a sewer pipe. Of course, even Cates couldn't do much to save the show from what may have been the worst collection of nominated songs in history. For years to come, scholars will be debating which was the stranger Oscar moment: Bob Dylan's much-too-close-up performance, or Bjork singing her toe-tapping number in a swan dress. ("I was going to wear my swan," said Martin, "but to me, they're so last year.") The music, however, wasn't the only cringe-worthy moment. It's lovely to do a film-clip salute to the movie people who passed away, but when will they teach the crowd that it's incredibly tasteless to clap for some people and not others? It's a memorial, not Queen for a Day. And speaking of tasteless, why does Jennifer Lopez bother to wear clothes in public at all? Her barely-there see-through top forced the director to do a tight head-and-shoulders shot to keep the show PG-rated — which may have been the point. Once again, ABC demanded exclusive rights to the pre-show — and once again, ABC produced an excruciating half-hour. We don't need "how do you feel" interviews, and we don't want to see the inside of an empty ballroom. We just want to see who's there and what they're wearing. How hard can that be? |
