25th Annual Family Film Awards (2022) – 2/5

Tolerable entertainment for everybody, most of all nuclear families

Here we have the 25th Annual Family Film Awards and this title is relatively telling I would say. This is an awards ceremony that is mostly for families or for kids watching content together with their parents. And surely rather smaller kids than those who maybe watch the MTV Movie Awards. I kinda like idea and I also learned something new here, namely that a „nuclear family“ is pretty harmless and has nothing to do with an atomic threat. However, I am kinda certain that certain people in a political climate like the current do not really like the term „nuclear family“ anymore. It’s not too common anyway I guess as I have not come across it knowingly before today, but then again I am not a native. Excuse the rambling. The show here ran for minimally under 80 minutes without commercials, so it was not too long. Makes also sense that the young kids should not watch for 2.5 hours. I am not sure about the running time with commercials, maybe 100 or 105 minutes. Not too important anyway. What this show did right what many other awards shows have been doing wrong for years, if not decades already by now, is that they did not try to fit in all the music they could. One song on the stage after the next and as a consequence it does not feel like an awards show anymore. This one feels like an awards show, even if it is kinda sad I have to mention this in a show’s favor as it is something I wish we could take for granted. But we can’t in times like these. The title is nonetheless misleading because this is not exclusively a film awards show. Yes, films play a vital role here, maybe even the biggest as these categories come towards the end and can thus be seen as the highlight of the evening, but there was also a great deal of awards recognition for television shows and this includes daytime as well as primetime (or prime time?), so it also combines the two Emmy formats in one. Which makes sense though because it is only at the Emmys where they split them up because otherwise the daytime shows would probably not even have a chance to get nominated at all. Evening is where the money is.

Anyway, you can see from the title that this was a bit of a special occasion because it was the 25th anniversary of the event and that is fairly impressive. So it started at the end of the old millennium then I assume if there were no significant interruptions. Would be interesting to find out which shows and films won back then at the turn of the millennium. 25 years means, however, that this show has made it through its starting phase and will probably keep existing for years, maybe decades to come. Good for them. It is still fairly difficult to find a great deal of information about this event, at least if we compare it to other American awards shows. You have to be more creative during your search. With the hosts I knew Dean Cain sounded familiar and then I made the connection to Superman and yep it is him indeed. It was also mentioned by somebody else during the show that they just got an award from Superman or so and how thrilled they were because of that, so yeah Cain’s turn as Clark Kent may be several decades back in the past, but it is not forgotten, especially during not exactly superlative events like this awards show. His co-host was Laura McKenzie here. I cannot say I am too familiar with her at all. But she seemed nice. That is the most important thing and given the show’s background they also kept the cleavage factor relatively low with her/their dress(es). What else stayed in the mind? As a big Hannah Montana fan, I recognized Emily Osment immediately in a clip and she is 30 now and I see she plays a character on „Young Sheldon“. The one nominated there, the girl we see with Osment in said clip, even won the award and got to present an award later on herself. We will see how she is going to do in the future and if she can also turn into a successful actress when she has grown up.

In general, the people you saw during this show were not exactly famous. Tom Arnold some might recognize and Oscar nominee Eric Roberts was there too. I have to admit I did not even recognize the winner in the lifetime achievement category or whatever it was called exactly. Not familiar with this woman. Maybe my loss. So the clips, like the one I already mentioned, stayed more in the mind for me. I was really baffled to see what John Goodman has turned into. Definitely good for him and his health, even if he looks like somebody else now. I guess his weight always contributed a lot to his screen presence. The director here is Chris Merrill. Cannot say anything about him either really, but I see he has worked on other television specials, also already on the aforementioned Daytime Emmy Awards and it seems as if he mostly focuses on editing programs like this. I mean he has „The Top 14 Greatest Valentine’s Day Movies of all Time“ in his body of work. That format was hosted by Dean Cain too and the force behind it was the Popstar Magazine, just like with this show here too. That does say a lot, the title already. Okay, I won’t judge. It’s nice if people find out about good romance movies through programs like these and at least he has not worked on fairly embarrassing awards shows like the BET Awards or so, even if it is probably only like that because they did not ask him. With this one here, he did a fairly decent job though. Nothing great, but tolerable at times and he „only“ directed anyway. I am not sure who wrote this. I talked about the music earlier already and I said I was glad that they kept the quantity low and I am even happier that the music I heard here was nice. Elliott Yamin’s rendition of „Amazing Grace“ was a bit of a triumph and I think he was helped there with the backup vocals by the/The L. A. Gospel Choir and in the end the latter (without Yamin) performed Bonnie Tyler’s „Holding Out for a Hero“ which was worth listening to for sure too. If they weren’t at the other end of the planet, I would also pay to see them in concert, both Yamin and the choir.

So there were surely some positive aspects here, but as a whole the show never got beyond mediocrity territory. This may also have been the reason why none of the big-name winners were really there. A question of reason and effect and difficult to say which is which. Had Tom Hanks shown up, he would have risen a bit in my appreciation again. Of course, he did not. I was also a bit surprised he won. For a family awards show, I maybe would have expected a more likable character to take home the trophy. Or an actor who plays a more likable character I should say. In general, they were really big on Luhrman’s „Elvis“ here. Austin Butler and Baz Luhrman himself weren’t present either. You surely have to feel a bit bad though for an awards show where they have to accept so many trophies on the winners‘ behalf. Is there a plural to that word? Behalves? Beehives? Never mind, just my inner linguist showing up again. I mean this even was the case for the big category of the night that nobody was there to accept the award and with an awards show that exists for a quarter of a century already, this is certainly disappointing. I am generally harsher and would say that this should have them really ask themselves the question if it makes sense to keep going with the show for another edition, let alone another five or twentiy-five editions, but today I will be slightly more kinder. Maybe it’s nice for the families to watch this if they know and like the programs featured in here and also know some of the people coming by to hand out or win awards. Like in my head right now I see father, mother and two children sitting there on the sofa together watching this show. Almost like the bear family from Goldilocks. Alright, enough with that now. To sum it all up, I would say that, despite a few decent moments, overall it was just not enough for a positive recommendation, so I suggest you skip the watch, even if it was better than most other (American) awards shows these days, no matter if we are talking movies or music. Also good to see that they kept politics out here and did not try to indoctrinate young children this way already. That is really the most important thing or most despicable if they include stuff like this and far more crucial than who won or who was there. Other shows can learn a lot from this approach.