These are "The 25th Annual Critics' Choice Awards" and as this is a bit of a meaningful anniversary, I am genuinely shocked how bad these turned out from several perspectives. First of all, I would like to say that it says here on imdb that this has a running time of 3 hours. The version I watched ran for under 2 hours and 10 minutes, which means that there is like 30% commercials and that is not one bit acceptable for any kind of program. Boo. Now if the show at least could have been better. But it was not. This starts with Taye Diggs already. He hosted in 2019 and he returned in 2020. He was completely uninteresting. How he turned his opening monologue into a most forgettable dance number about this event was still among the better moments he had and that says it all basically. The only thing that stays in the mind is that he is married to Frozen's Idina Menzel as we find out when he interviews Kristen Bell. Did not know that. Speaking of Kristen Bell, she was one of two horrible moments for me here, why I rate this so low. Giving this kind of lifetime achievement / women empowerment awards was a bad joke to me. First of all, I think she is not a good or talented actress at all, but I can understand if people disagree. However, the mere existence of this awards had nothing to do with critics and was only in there to please liberal media, liberal Hollywood and probably liberal politicians too. Fittingly with that, we also get the occasional political message already. Things are heating up for the 2020 election and expect the waves of hate speech directed against the President to really appear very frequently over the course of the next 9 months. But back to this show: The second thing I really found infuriating was basically that they probably displayed the names of half the winners, including really big categories even (like both screenplay awards), and did not announce them as winners, did not let them on stage. So disrespectful. How is it even possible to make such a long awards show and then show only half of the categories. Well, the answer is giving honorary awards to the likes of Kristen Bell. The actual lifetime achievement award went to Eddie Murphy and he is a pretty good choice. A bit of a pity that his performance did not get in at the Oscars this year, would have preferred him instead of Leo for example.
The winners were sometimes good, sometimes not so much. These included film and television. As for the acting categories, the wins for Phoenix, Zellweger, Pitt and Dern basically confirmed that these four are the ones dominating and will also win the Oscar soon. For Tarantino's Best Picture win, I am pretty happy too. This film was really good and he deserves it and he even breathed a little life in this boring ceremony. As he always does, even if I did not like too much his quote about critics being right for the first time. Already the moment when he asks the child actress (who was terrific by the way) to go to the stage and accepts Pitt's awards was hilarious. In a good way. So I just said Brad Pitt was not there. Well, he wasn't the only one. Actually, it felt as if half of the winners weren't there, which really showws you how much they care about the opinion from critics and awards linked to said opinion. So we also got the usual jokes about critics, like one person speaking about how the show must be good because critics cannot talk negatively about "their" event. Guess what? I can. Anyway, these jokes also felt stale and haveing seen ceremonies from previous years before, I must say they surely did a better job with the comedy writing there. The presenters I mean too. Many inclusions there that made me question why they were even picked. Then again, what would you expect for a show that is hosted by a guy who is really not famous at all and maybe only there because he won a critics awards over 15 years ago.
Can I say anything positive here? Well, the award itself looks pretty nice. I think in terms of the shape, I prefer it over basically all other awards out there. I was a bit surprised by several categories having shared winners. Okay, this is basically all I have to say about this event I guess. I was majorly disappointed by how it turned out. What is especially shocking is that they had three writers here and then they come up with a mess like that. Honestly, I cannot blame the winners/nominees for not showing up that night. Then again, they did not know how this would turn out. I think last year was better. At least they were not trying so hard to convince us Jennifer Lopez is an icon. I mean she is a star and certainly talented, but this was so over the top, especially the moment when Fleabag won big. I must say I did not mind Phoebe Waller-Bridge early on this awards season, but her exposure has certainly crossed the line now. Doubt her show can be this good. Nice to see Andrew Scott win. He was also considered a possible winner at the Emmys and Golden Globes, but came short both times. A bit surprisingly. Here he gets his moment in the spotlight. Maybe his suit was not the best choice for that. Oh well, I don't really care about clothes anyway. And back to the moment the show hit rock-bottom: Somebody tell Kristen Bell please that Moonlight jokes are officially not funny anymore, especially not in this most uncreative manner. Okay, something positive again now that I finish my review: I cannot say too much about the TV/drama/acting winners because I haven't seen most of them, but when JLD loses, it is never a bad day and always nice to see some love for Breaking Bad, even if it just the movie. No love from me for this event though. Not even orth seeing for huge awards show fans like myself. Please bring back the quality for 2021. Oh yeah, and there was an almost 100-year dude winning.
The winners were sometimes good, sometimes not so much. These included film and television. As for the acting categories, the wins for Phoenix, Zellweger, Pitt and Dern basically confirmed that these four are the ones dominating and will also win the Oscar soon. For Tarantino's Best Picture win, I am pretty happy too. This film was really good and he deserves it and he even breathed a little life in this boring ceremony. As he always does, even if I did not like too much his quote about critics being right for the first time. Already the moment when he asks the child actress (who was terrific by the way) to go to the stage and accepts Pitt's awards was hilarious. In a good way. So I just said Brad Pitt was not there. Well, he wasn't the only one. Actually, it felt as if half of the winners weren't there, which really showws you how much they care about the opinion from critics and awards linked to said opinion. So we also got the usual jokes about critics, like one person speaking about how the show must be good because critics cannot talk negatively about "their" event. Guess what? I can. Anyway, these jokes also felt stale and haveing seen ceremonies from previous years before, I must say they surely did a better job with the comedy writing there. The presenters I mean too. Many inclusions there that made me question why they were even picked. Then again, what would you expect for a show that is hosted by a guy who is really not famous at all and maybe only there because he won a critics awards over 15 years ago.
Can I say anything positive here? Well, the award itself looks pretty nice. I think in terms of the shape, I prefer it over basically all other awards out there. I was a bit surprised by several categories having shared winners. Okay, this is basically all I have to say about this event I guess. I was majorly disappointed by how it turned out. What is especially shocking is that they had three writers here and then they come up with a mess like that. Honestly, I cannot blame the winners/nominees for not showing up that night. Then again, they did not know how this would turn out. I think last year was better. At least they were not trying so hard to convince us Jennifer Lopez is an icon. I mean she is a star and certainly talented, but this was so over the top, especially the moment when Fleabag won big. I must say I did not mind Phoebe Waller-Bridge early on this awards season, but her exposure has certainly crossed the line now. Doubt her show can be this good. Nice to see Andrew Scott win. He was also considered a possible winner at the Emmys and Golden Globes, but came short both times. A bit surprisingly. Here he gets his moment in the spotlight. Maybe his suit was not the best choice for that. Oh well, I don't really care about clothes anyway. And back to the moment the show hit rock-bottom: Somebody tell Kristen Bell please that Moonlight jokes are officially not funny anymore, especially not in this most uncreative manner. Okay, something positive again now that I finish my review: I cannot say too much about the TV/drama/acting winners because I haven't seen most of them, but when JLD loses, it is never a bad day and always nice to see some love for Breaking Bad, even if it just the movie. No love from me for this event though. Not even orth seeing for huge awards show fans like myself. Please bring back the quality for 2021. Oh yeah, and there was an almost 100-year dude winning.
