The 96th Academy Awards have come and gone. It started an hour early, yet still six minutes late. It was completely predictable and yet pulled off some welcome surprises. This was Jimmy Kimmel's fourth time hosting the Oscars, and he's found a good groove that'll get him invited back again. There were a lot of little adjustments for the sake of time, like most of the song performances being significantly shortened, that helped to speed things along. This meant that longer segments like the actor presentations and the epic "I'm Just Ken" production number could run as long as needed.
I've never been great at predictions, but I got a decent chunk of the winners right. My biggest error was assuming that "Barbie" was going to win in the production categories that went to "Poor Things," which got four Oscars, the second highest of any film. "Oppenheimer" had such a sweep with seven that several of the Best Picture nominees ended up going home with nothing - "Killers of the Flower Moon," "Past Lives," and "Maestro." I really thought that Lily Gladstone was going to win Best Actress after she won the SAG Award, but the Oscars have been getting more international by the year, and the old bellwethers aren't always right.
Everyone seems to have gotten the memo that acceptance speeches needed to be short and sweet. There weren't as many endless lists of names this year and only one really unfortunate speech - the "Godzilla Minus One" Visual Effects team trying valiantly to deliver their thanks and memorialize their departed producer in a language that none of them spoke. However, we had some great ones from dependably entertaining people like Robert Downey Jr. and Emma Stone. Even better were the presenters, most of them handling out two awards apiece, and delivering bits and banter that actually worked. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito reuniting and heckling Michael Keaton as their "Batman" villain characters was great. Kate McKinnon and America Ferrera roping Steven Spielberg into their nonsense was great. John Cena's tribute to the 1974 Oscars streaker is an all-timer. There were several blink-and-you-miss-em jokes that wouldn't have landed nearly as well if they were longer.
The stagecraft this year was generally very good, with multiple screens and elements constantly rotating in and out of the space. The big vertical panels for the award presentations and the big circular element for the musical performances were especially eye-catching. However, there were a few missteps. The most obvious was the "In Memoriam" segment, which had way too much going on - distracting dancers, Andrea Bocelli and son singing "Con Te Partiro," and different tributes popping up on different screens, with a bunch of names stuffed together at the end. Lance Reddick and Kenneth Anger deserved better! Then there was the stunt montage that felt like a poor consolation prize for a community that's been gunning for their own category for a while. Some of the transitions were jarring, such as cutting from the sobering "20 Days in Mariupol" acceptance speech straight into "I'm Just Ken."
But speaking of "I'm Just Ken," it's easily the most memorable piece of spectacle that the Academy has put together in years. Ryan Gosling essentially got to star in a genderbent "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" with all the Kens from "Barbie," Slash showed up for a guitar solo, and the crowd was loving it. Half the fun was the delighted reaction shots from Greta Gerwig and Billie Eilish in the audience as Gosling belted in his hot pink, bedazzled suit. A big reason that this year's show was so successful was because it actually got to make use of some star power. It's been too long since the Oscar frontrunners were popular hits like "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie," and the Best Song category wasn't terrible. I mean, it was still terrible this year, but two songs from "Barbie" helped a lot.
As for Jimmy Kimmel, he's clearly not as funny as John Mulaney, but he understood how to work the crowd, how to interact with the presenters, and how to keep his own shtick brief. He handled material about the 2023 strikes, Donald Trump, "Madame Web," and Messi the dog about as well as anybody could be expected to. I think the show works better with a host, and a seasoned professional like Kimmel has proven to be a sure bet.
That's two Oscar ceremonies in a row that have been decent. Fingers crossed that this is the new normal.
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