Culture / Entertainment

Worst Oscars Ever — Lady Bird and Get Out Completely Robbed in Jimmy Kimmel’s Dud of a Night: The Academy Clings to its Tired, Old Hollywood Ways in Fish Man Lovefest

BY // 03.05.18

Hollywood completely snubbed Lady Bird, largely snubbed Get Out and totally forgot The Florida Project, which is 10 times the movie that both Best Picture winner The Shape of Water and Oscar acting darling Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri are. Welcome to the worst Oscars of recent movie times.

After all the crazy drama of last year’s Oscars — Faye Dunaway rushing to blurt out the wrong Best Picture winner — and the delayed groundbreaking win by Moonlight — the followup turns out to be the most predictable (and unsatisfying) Oscars ever.

It’s a shame that Dunaway and Warren Beatty didn’t manage to mess up Best Picture again in their big return to the Dolby Theatre’s big (and more gaudied up than ever) stage. At least that would have given everyone something interesting to talk about.

Instead, it’s a night for the Fish Man. Shape of Water is a clear mammoth step back from Moonlight last year. In many ways, it marks a complete retreat into tradition with the Academy’s supposedly diversified membership embracing a movie that fawningly pays homage to Hollywood’s old song and dance traditions.

Which fits perfectly with this dud of a night.

For all the industry-shaking promise of the #MeToo movement, this Oscar night delivered few tide shifting moments. The only powerful Hollywood figure whose cage was rattled was King Kong in some minor technical award montage.

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They’ll be teaching Get Out in college classes 10 years from now. The Shape of Water won’t even be thought of at all 18 months from now.

Even the usually excellent Jimmy Kimmel seemed unusually subdued. Kimmel’s jokes lacked their usual bite (and truthfulness). And even his crowning bring mega stars to a movie theater across the street to surprise regular folks field trip worked better as a concept than an actual moment.

“Oscars is 90 years old this year, which means she’s probably at home watching Fox News,” Kimmel cracks in one of the few jokes that actually lands. Though, he could have added “and voting for The Shape of Water” to that theoretical 90-year-old’s routine.

When one of Kimmel’s better jokes involves the Paw Patrol, you know he’s having a rough night. Ryder and Marshal‘s one-liners are even more amusing.

Kimmel was a much better host last year.

Maybe he would have risen to the occasion if Get Out had been raised up as it deserved. No movie did more to shake up Hollywood this past year. Plus, it’s a damn good (already classic) movie that’s more entertaining than at least 80 percent of the other Best Picture nominees. Jordan Peele became the first African-American to win a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, but that mostly just illustrates how messed up Hollywood has been throughout its history.

Peele deserved much more. They’ll be teaching Get Out in college classes 10 years from now. The Shape of Water won’t even be thought of at all 18 months from now.

America’s movie goers know better. Lady Bird doesn’t pick up a single Oscar? That’s like Jose Altuve not garnering a single vote in an MVP race. From its opening scene when Saoirse Ronan leaps from a moving car, Greta Gerwig casts a spell. Laurie Metcalf is particularly robbed in losing out to Allison Janney’s near caricature performance in I, Tonya.

Janney is usually great, but I, Tonya is not a good movie and not anywhere close to one of Janney’s better acting performances.

What is it with bad sports movies and the Oscars this year? The Academy gives Kobe Bryant, a man once charged with raping a 19-year-old hotel desk clerk, an Oscar for a ho-hum animated short in the year of Harvey Weinstein? Is that why they call it movie magic?

Where’s The Florida Project?

Denying Willem Dafoe and The Florida Project (in the one category it’s recognized in) the Best Supporting Actor trophy is another Oscar travesty on a much less grand scale. Dafoe is great as the wearied manager of a run-down motel who does his best to look out for the people and kids struggling to live there.

Look, I love Sam Rockwell’s father — and his unbridled dad love — as much as anyone. And Rockwell’s a powerful force on screen. But Three Billboards is simply not that good of a movie even outside of its troublesome bigger picture issues. Its story is so dependent on unbelievable coincidences that it makes even Stranger Things 2 look well thought out by comparison.

Yes, Frances McDormand delivered another interesting speech (an actual sane one this time) and memorably shouted out Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim for her own Three Billboards win, but this movie is no Dunkirk let alone Lady Bird or Get Out.

The best, most entertaining and groundbreaking movies of the year don’t come close to sniffing the most important gold statues. This is an Oscars of stone-cold robberies.

“I did it all myself,” Allison Janney deadpans to start her Oscar speech in one actually memorable moment.

Well, the Oscars did it all wrong. Again.

Talk about no surprise.

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