Oscars TV Review: Ceremony Tries To Move Past The Slap With Conventional But Cheery, History-Making Night
13.03.2023 - 07:29
/ deadline.com
Tom Cruise may have been the man who saved Hollywood’s ass, according to Steve Spielberg, but the Top Gun: Maverick star wasn’t in the Dolby Theater tonight to save the Academy Awards.
Turned out that while Cruise was surely missed, as was Avatar kingpin James Cameron, their star power wasn’t necessary to fuel one of the more watchable if not conventional Oscars of the 21st century. In that sense, this was an Academy Awards full of few surprises where almost everyone stuck to the script.
It might not have been magic, but it didn’t need to be. It just needed to turn the page.
Along with a historic Best Actress win by Michelle Yeoh, the ceremony was perhaps captured in many ways by the playful face that the esteemed Spielberg made in the audience near the beginning when host Jimmy Kimmel claimed the “Fabel Man” director was one of the dignitaries who could protect him if necessary from a repeat of last year’s slap heard around the world.
Scarred by two years of pandemic shuttered cinemas and industry anxiety, questionable relevance, and then deeply stained by that “little skirmish,” as Kimmel put it, of Will Smith whacking Chris Rock live on-stage last year, the 95th Academy Awards had a simple mission statement of cinema celebration and escapism.
Now the 5 PM PT starting show was once again way too long, and certainly started to wane once it passed the three-hour point. In a show more visually deft than usual, for the most part, the producers and organizers of this year’s Oscars succeed by embracing Hollywood itself.
In addition to the love of movies on offer, Everything Everywhere At at Once’s Yeoh became the first Asian to win Best Actress. Her co-star Ke Huy Quan is just the second Asian ever to get the Best