Was multi-talented Seth MacFarlane the worst Oscars host? The worst ever? Or only second worst? Or was he edgy, being just what the Oscars needed to finally discard the staid traditions of the 20th century and appeal to younger audiences who generally love his cartoon Family Guy, which he produces and voices in several roles?
If there’s a buzz beyond the Oscar winners today, its about MacFarlane, a show biz figure with a genuinely solid resume and truly a triple threat: he can sing, dance, do voices. Not everyone is sure he can really do successful comedy — which is tough to do in a way that pleases everyone or doesn’t flop in front of a self-impressed Hollywood audience on Oscar night. Here’s some of the buzz on McFarland which you might say indicates he got mixed reviews:
—On Twitter
—The Telegraph:
What Family Guy and Ted creator Seth MacFarlane did as the host of this year’s Oscar show was to audition, almost faultlessly, for the part of being an appalling one. You can at least say he was upfront about this. Within minutes of his first routine — the one that needlessly insulted Jean Dujardin for his low profile since winning last year, and threw in a dismally unfunny remark about the torture in Django Unchained resembling what Rihanna and Chris Brown would call “date night” — he was laboriously trying to bypass criticism.
William Shatner, doing Captain Kirk, called in with a message from the future to help MacFarlane fix the broadcast as it went along: a bold but self-defeating gambit. He was shown a headline – “Worst Oscar host ever” – from tomorrow’s news. More feeble jokes. Two inexplicable dance routines. Somehow these got the headline modified to “Pretty Bad Oscar Host”. Eventually he reached “Mediocre”. Nothing happening on stage remotely justified the upgrade.
The problem is, MacFarlane’s mere awareness of his obvious horribleness as a presenter was no inoculation against it. He’d deliver would-be risqué cracks, most of them just lamely nasty, and serve up a coy grin afterwards to take the edge off. Many in the audience seemed abjectly uncomfortable. I said “almost faultlessly”, as a few more good-natured cracks did work, like the one preparing nine-year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhané Wallis for her loss to “that old lady” (not Emmanuelle Riva, who turned 86 on the night, but 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence). Otherwise, MacFarlane’s impression of a smirking school bully goes straight into the hall of Oscar shame, along with that wacko, dead-eyed bit of performance art from James Franco two years ago.
Finally … an Oscars the guys can enjoy!
That’s how ABC billed the 85th annual Academy Awards ceremony, which aired on the network at 8:30 p.m. ET Sunday night.
Perhaps they meant 12-year-old boys?
The event, honoring the best in cinema for 2012, was a disaster, with host Seth MacFarlane—the creator of a few TV series, including Family Guy, and the blockbuster comedy film Ted—doing an incredibly awkward Rat Pack-meets-Crank Yankers routine, replete with silly jokes touching on rape, race, sexism, Nazis, and the Lincoln assassination.
With the exception of a couple of Sinatra song-and-dance routines, including “The Way You Look Tonight,” where he was flanked by Charlize Theron and Channing Tatum dancing onstage, and “High Hopes,” for which he was joined by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe, precious little worked for MacFarlane. We should’ve really all seen this coming, since his Oscar promos leading up to the ceremony were unfunny, to say the least.
“Daniel Day-Lewis, your process fascinates me,” joked MacFarlane. “You were totally 100 percent in character as Lincoln during the movie … So when you saw a cellphone, would you have to go, “Oh my God, what’s that?” If you bumped into Don Cheadle on the studio lot, did you try to free him? How deep did your method go?”
That was the first of many cringe-worthy MacFarlane jokes throughout the evening, including many slightly sexist barbs aimed at women. There was a crack about Jessica Chastain’s character in Zero Dark Thirty, the CIA analyst Maya, spending a decade hunting for Osama bin Laden being evidence of women never being “able to let anything go,” or another instance where he remarked, “For all those women who had the ‘flu,’ it paid off … lookin’ good.” And in case you were confused about the evening’s target demo, he sang a pre-taped number called “We Saw Your Boobs,” pointing out instances where past nominees posed topless in movies, and voiced a reenactment of the film Flight with sock puppets. Later in the night, he even quipped that we’d “reached that point in the evening” where Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, or someone else [read: attractive Latina] comes onstage and “we have no idea what they’re saying, but we don’t care, ’cause they’re so attractive.”
The joke that attracted the most groans, however, was this little gem about the Lincoln assassination:
“Daniel Day-Lewis is not the first actor to be nominated for playing Lincoln. Raymond Massey portrayed him in 1940?s Abe Lincoln in Illinois. I would argue, though, the actor who really got inside Lincoln’s head was John Wilkes Booth.”
Clever.
–International Business Times:
Interestingly enough, MacFarlane began the night knowing that he would be offending more than a few Oscar viewers, and his introductory speech seemed designed to address those concerns. Before he started, MacFarlane had William Shatner appear as his “Star Trek” character Capt. James T. Kirk to warn MacFarlane that he was about to become “the worst Oscar host ever.”
Sadly, not only was Kirk’s in-character joke correct, but it proved to be the funniest bit of the night. At least when Shatner was talking. For years, Shatner has been a master of self-deprecating comedy, and his bit as Kirk oozed self-awareness. Unfortunately, MacFarlane opted to feign Shatner’s brand of self-deprecation to promote his vanity talents.
Instead of making the opening scene an attempt to legitimately poke fun at himself, MacFarlane used the opportunity to launch into not one, but three self-indulgent song-and-dance numbers. One of them simply recounted the actresses who’ve bared their breasts on camera. It’s a perfect example of “Family Guy’s” brand of humor, which loves attacking anyone who isn’t a straight white male. And no, Seth, simply acknowledging that you know it’s offensive doesn’t make it OK.
Only one of MacFarlane’s jokes landed the way it was intended. In a surprisingly inspired move, he announced that the Von Trapp family would be singing a number from “The Sound of Music.” He motioned toward the door twice, but the family never appeared. Finally, a man in a Nazi uniform bolted through the door yelling, “They’re gone!” It was a clever, smart joke that didn’t rely on bashing anyone. MacFarlane was a bit too light on those kinds of things Sunday night.
Ultimately, MacFarlane may not have been the worst Oscars host ever, but he was certainly close. But, hey, at least he had the good sense to know that “Ted” was a train wreck.
This year’s Oscars show on ABC wrapped after a bit over three and a half hours and there were a bunch of great moments, a bit of tedium and a lot of disappointment over the tasteless antics of host Seth MacFarlane.
Look, I’m not a prude, though I’ve ranted at the likes of Ricky Gervais when he hosted the Golden Globes. You don’t have to be sweetness and light and/or just mildly funny, but as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler displayed at the Golden Globes you can find the right mix to be biting and clever without resorting to cheap, shocking and sometimes hurtful jokes.
I was neither backstage nor in the control booth, but I can guess something must have happened after the overlong 17-minute opening segment, wherein MacFarlane early on cast mock aspersion at last year’s Best Actor winner, Jean Dujardin, as essentially having since disappeared, when it’s clear his stellar career is mostly anchored in France. And a sometimes funny bit with William Shatner, beaming in from the future as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, became somewhat surreal when he warned MacFarlane that his reviews were destined to be pretty bad.
Mercifully interspersed with the host’s puerile humor were musical bits during which Channing Tatum danced quite masterfully with Charlize Theron, and Daniel Radcliffe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt sang and danced, aided by the surprisingly excellent vocal talents of Mr. MacFarlane. He wasn’t just on-key, he sang like he’d been in musical theatre. And, upon doing some follow-up research, I learned he’d sung at Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall in London. Who knew?
During these moments and when he played it straight, he was great — poised, handsome and charming. But on occasion he spewed classless material, which I’m sure he thought was very funny. He absolutely bombed in a joke ostensibly crediting Daniel Day-Lewis with getting into Lincoln’s head, but then indicated he hadn’t done as well as had John Wilkes Booth. The audience gasped.
In an opening monologue and package of song-and-dance numbers obviously calculated to live up to, and even lampoon, his own reputation for pushing the boundaries of taste, MacFarlane put his biting, edgy brand of humor front and center.
AND:
MacFarlane’s performance should not have come as too great a surprise. The comedian, actor and singer made his mark as creator of the animated television series “Family Guy,” a show known for its ribald satire, much of it aimed at Hollywood conventions.
And MacFarlane, 39, wasted no time in sending up his own risqué persona, in a comedy bit with actor William Shatner, who joined the host on stage via a video screen in the character of Captain Kirk from the sci-fi TV and film series “Star Trek.”
In his fictional drop-in visit from the future, Shatner warns MacFarlane he is “destroying the Academy Awards” with jokes that are “tasteless and inappropriate.”
But the interlude segued into a song-and-dance number by MacFarlane showcasing his vocal chops to a tune called “We Saw Your Boobs,” in which he rhapsodically ticked off the names of various A-list Hollywood actresses who have bared their breasts in films over the years.
Admonished by Shatner to sing songs that celebrate the movies rather than mock them, MacFarlane proceeded to deliver a more respectful rendering of the showbiz standard, “The Way You Look Tonight,” joined on stage in elegant dance by actress Charlize Theron (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) and actor Channing Tatum (“Magic Mike”).
MacFarlane showed off his own dancing talents in a three-way soft-shoe number with actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Lincoln”) and “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe.
In the way that many cartoons, including MacFarlane’s own “Family Guy” series, operate on different levels for kids and their parents, this year’s Oscar telecast seemed especially designed to play to more than one TV audience.
—Seth MacFarlane’s Best and Worst Oscar Moments
—MUST READ: GO HERE to read The Week’s great roundup on reviews of MacFarlane and some video highlights.
The host mixes a song about breasts with a vaudeville routine. And this is the Oscars?
Oscars fans have seen a lot over the years, but this may be the first time they’ve ever seen a host use the awards to audition for his own variety show.
That was what Seth MacFarlane was doing on ABC’s Oscar broadcast Sunday, wasn’t it? Because it’s hard to imagine just what else he might have had in mind with that oddly awkward mix of monologue and music that opened the show and set the evening’s why-am-I-here? tone.
Give this to MacFarlane: He threw everything he had at it. He dressed up like The Flying Nun. He played with sock puppets. He radiated charm, if not cool. And, of course, he told jokes, a tad nervously, perhaps, but he did manage to land a fair number of them. He even got Tommy Lee Jones to laugh at a joke about getting Tommy Lee Jones to laugh, which has to count for something. Oh, and he sang and danced. A lot.
He started with a number about seeing stars’ breasts in movies that was meant to represent the kind of “wild, crazy and tasteless” stunt folks were supposedly afraid the man behind Family Guy might do, and was, unfortunately, less wild, crazy or tasteless than it needed to be. He then moved into more standard production numbers that fell somewhere in between Billy Crystal’s Oscars classics and something you might have seen on The Andy Williams Show. It’s as if he saw the Oscar assignment as his last, best chance to revive vaudeville.
What MacFarlane seemed to forget was that the job at hand involved more than just performing, and was about more than just his performance. One longed for him to drop the meta-jokes about the fear that he’d be an inappropriate host and get on with the job of actually hosting, which means keeping the train running, making your guests comfortable, and making the evening more about them than you.
Awash in self-indulgence, neither he nor his 3-hour-and-35-minute show ever seemed to hit a comfortable, confident stride, which is a shame, because the broadcast had a lot of entertainment to offer.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.