Billy Crystal as host of the Oscars: How was he? What critics are saying today.
The general consensus of last night’s Oscars is pretty much the same across the board this morning. THEY SUCKED.
If you watched last night’s Oscar Awards hosted by Billy Crystal, chances are you were extremely disappointed like the rest of us. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than last year’s awards with Anne Hathaway and James Franco, along comes last night’s hot mess. I know everyone was excited about seeing Billy Crystal as the host again, but he was soooooooooooo bad. Like really, really bad. He was incredibly UNFUNNY the entire night. As The Hollywood Reporter writes, “The colossal hosting disaster from last year is now forgotten by the safe, unfunny, retro-disaster that was Crystal making jokes that he laughed at repeatedly and overseeing an Oscars telecast that was as poorly paced as any in recent memory,” said Tim Goodman.
The Washington Post said Crystal “seemed to be to be overseeing a cruise ship dinner show designed to appeal to the over-50 travel club. Early on, it hit the rocks and started to list. Almost everyone drowned.”
New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley wrote: “The whole night looked like an AARP pep rally,” with jokes referring to Crystal’s age and a slow-moving format where the “some of the least interesting awards” kicked off the broadcast.
Newsday‘s Verne Gay wrote: “Billy was back and it was very good to have him back. But the hard truth is that the Oscars, like life itself, has moved on. The world has changed, and sometimes it’s better to cherish our memories than rehash them.”
Meanwhile, Mary McNamara of The Los Angeles Times pondered what the three-hour, super-reverential event might have been like had disgraced would-be producer Brett Ratner not opened his mouth, thereby dragging pal Eddie Murphy along with him as a prospective host.
“Chris Rock‘s riff about how easy it is to voice animation also cleared the smoke of the holy incense for a few minutes, raising the question of how different the show would have been if Ratner had kept his lip zipped and Murphy had remained host,” McNamara wrote.
“But if Crystal and his bar mitzvah humor seemed a bit dated and occasionally weirdly racist — yes, that was him in black face as Sammy Davis Jr. during the opening number, and yes, he did make a joke about there being no black women in Beverly Hills — his hand was steady on the tiller, even if the waters were bathwater calm and very, very familiar,” she continued.
The awards went at such a slow pace, I found myself not even really caring anymore. I liked the first couple montages of celebrities between commercial breaks, but there were waaaaaaay too many of them.
I do feel bad for Billy Crystal. He should have never come back to host the Oscars. Until last night – he might have gone down as the best Oscar host of all time. But last night’s hot mess may have tarnished that.
I see a huge presence online saying Melissa McCarthy should have hosted, and I couldn’t agree more!
