User Reviews

These are the "BET Awards 2014" and the title is self-explanatory, namely this is an award show that honors people, mostly Americans, that have a bit of Black blood inside them. You may think this is really on the edge shutting out people of a different race from an awards ceremony and honestly I find it hard to argue against such a statement. Anyway, this is not the place to either because we are not talking now about the BET Awards concept as a whole, but the 2014 edition that will have its 5th anniversary next year. The running time here on imdb is stated at 3 hours and that is correct. And unlike for other awards shows where these 3 hours include a great deal of commercials, so that 2 hours 20 minutes roughly is more accurate, these are actually three hours, so it was really a very very long event we have here. The host is Chris Rock and I like him. He was still solid I guess with his physical approach to comedy and also how he uses his voice, but sadly his material was not that great. When he hosted the Oscars a few years ago, he was really on fire. Now for this show we got here, it suffers from some usual problems many awards shows have and that is that the concept of an awards show is that at the very center of it people are appreciated, lauded and given awards. But so many times these days, these shows turn into music stage performance shows with the actual giving out awards becoming secondary and frequently it is even so bad that they do not broadcast certain awards and their recipients in order to include more music. Maybe it is just me, but if I want to see a concert, then I go watch a concert. Okay, what else? This was fairly general anyway. Oh yeah, another thing that surprised me was to see Ariana Grande being nominated for Newcomer of the Year and losing the category to somebody I have never come across before. Would it be too bold to say, maybe she wasn't Black enough? I don't know. I also don't know how big she was 2013/2014 already, of course not the global superstar she is today, but still pretty surprising. As for the show itself, it was okay early on. The music was also solid in the first hour and they included several awards the way it should be. But quality-wise in terms of singing it went down afterward and became something you could not even call mediocre anymore. Sure the award to Lionel Richie makes sense, still feel pretty bad to know Rihanna has sold more than twice as many records as he has with how they mentioned the 100 million. Maybe we should appreciate the likes of him getting awards over the likes of her 30 years from now. And the honoring of Ruby Dee and Maya Angelou made the show better again too, even if Rashad disappointed me a bit. Usually like her more than here. But these brief moments of quality vanished quickly into the nothingness of the next performance. I would have been perfectly fine with the nominees for best song or so all getting a chance to perform, like it is handled at the Oscars too, maybe announce the winner afterward, but no such thing. Also sure felt strange how they mixed up films and music so frequently. Did not feel smooth to me. The background that it's about the color of the people and not the exact art form is just one I struggle to appreciate. Okay my rating explains the rest I think. Overall, not a good or entertaining event. I give it a thumbs-down and recommen you skip it.