Critic’s Notebook: At the Oscars, Some Self-Examination Among the Self-Celebration

But maybe the biggest statement was that it was happening at all: The former co-host of “The Man Show” — a Comedy Central show that featured women bouncing on trampolines — was now kicking off the Oscars with a monologue about sexism.

The issue came up early on the red carpet, where Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, two of Mr. Weinstein’s accusers, talked about the Time’s Up campaign. “We are going forward until we have an equitable and safe world for women,” Ms. Sorvino said.

Ms. Judd also appeared with two other Weinstein accusers, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra. Ms. Sciorra, who had reportedly been blacklisted by Mr. Weinstein, greeted the crowd: “It’s nice to see you all again. It’s been a while.”

The issue also came up by omission on E!, whose host Ryan Seacrest has been accused of sexual harassment by Suzie Hardy, his former personal stylist. (NBC Universal said it had an independent counsel investigate the charge and had elected to keep him as host.)

Mr. Seacrest was generally mum about #MeToo. When he interviewed Christopher Plummer, who replaced Kevin Spacey in “All the Money in the World” after Mr. Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct, the reason Mr. Plummer was in the film did not come up. If your lead host can’t talk about the biggest issue in Hollywood that year, you might consider having him take the night off.

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Another recurring theme was representation. Presenting the best director award, Emma Stone introduced the nominees as “these four men and Greta Gerwig.” (Guillermo del Toro, however, beat out Ms. Gerwig, only the fifth woman nominated in the category.)

And accepting the lead actress award for her role in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Frances McDormand asked every female nominee in the room to stand with her. “Look around, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed.”

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The makers of “Coco,” the best animated film, saluted Mexican culture; Lupita Nyong’o and Kumail Nanjiani flicked in a vote of support for the “Dreamers” brought into the country without documentation.

Maya Rudolph, brilliantly paired with Tiffany Haddish (2019 Oscar hosts, anyone?), joked about the program’s diversity, assuring viewers, “Don’t worry, there are so many more white people to come.”

Slide Show

Despite the recent upheaval in Hollywood, the ceremony at large still focused mainly on celebration and glitter literally, in the case of the blinding set, which looked as if the ceremony were encased in an enormous geode.

There’s also the perennial problem of bloat. The hitch, of course, is that every part of the show has its constituency. Cut awards, and someone will be slighted. Cut the musical numbers, and you’d lose Mary J. Blige tearing through “Mighty River” and Sufjan Stevens’s whispery “Mystery of Love.”

But one idea: Lose all the “We love the movies!” montages. (We are watching an Academy Awards. We are already into the movies.) Another: Ditch the stunt gags, like Mr. Kimmel’s leading a parade of stars to crash a movie screening, which are inevitably more fun to think up than to sit through.

Those are all typical issues, though. After what has been an atypical year for Hollywood, the show was mainly notable for acknowledging troubles that are harder to fix than an envelope mixup.

[ See a slide show from the red carpet | read about the after-parties]

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/movies/some-self-examination-among-the-oscars-self-celebration.html?partner=rss&emc=rss