The 27th Annual Critics‘ Choice Awards (2022) – 1/5

No critic should approve of the outcome here

Here we have the 27th Critics‘ Choice Awards and this is the edition from the year 2022, which can be added because the 2023 edition already took place as well in January now, but this one here is from March last year. Many 2022 awards season events were delayed and the critics choice ceremony was just one of those. It was not too easy to find this one, but when I did, I saw that it ran for two hours without commercials. If you include those, you can add another 30 minutes. The hosts were Taye Diggs (again) and Nicole Byer. I think they did a fine job overall. I do not always see it like this at all with the hosts. At least I would have preferred Diggs and Byer to have had more screen time than they eventually did and that says something positive. They were funny when they were on, but it wasn’t a lot. I think I liked her more than him even as his references to music and singing did get a little boring quickly at the beginning of the show. As you can see from my rating though, I thought that this was just one of really not many positive aspects from this show. First of all, I would like to talk a bit about the winners here: I think „The Power of the Dog“ is an awful film and I was really glad that it did not triumph at the Oscars. Here, it did triumph though and this made it easy for me eventually to go with the lowest rating possible when I was still undecided for quite a while during the watch if I should give one or two stars out of five. Campion’s award win was not helping either. No matter if it was her sucking up to the Williams sisters, who in my opinion hurt tennis more than they helped it, if it was her whining about that she has to compete with males too in her category or if it was her whining about how the critics have been really harsh towards her when they really weren’t (if you look at the positive receptions they gave genuinely forgettable films she made), it was all a mess with Campion here. I don’t find her likable at all and certainly not deserving of the big award that night for her film here. Or any other night.

On a more positive note, the acting ensemble win went to Belfast, a clearly superior film, and maybe this was also already an indicator of a shift in momentum that „The Power of the Dog“ would also come short at the Oscars, even if it was to another film than Belfast . Troy Kotsur’s win over Kodi Smit-McPhee was surely a momentum changer as this category had the two eventual frontrunners go up against each other and again the far more worthy entrant took home the victory. As close as supporting actor may have been, supporting actress was sealed since day one, so no need to go a lot into detail there. I like DeBose’s performance more than the actress. Lead actor was equally sealed unfortunately and we all know what happened on Oscar night there with Will Smith. Comes from comedy, has no funny bone in his body apparently. Here he did not show the same lack of class, but it was really unbearable to watch Aunjanue Ellis‘ head movements during his acceptance speech. Lead actress was a fairly open race with the momentum switching between Kidman, Stewart, Lady Gaga and Chastain, with the latter turning out triumphant eventually. Here and at the Oscars. I am just glad Lady Gaga did not. Tough to watch her here at the table in London. Yep, this show was split between two locations and many people were attending in London because of pandemic restrictions that made it difficult to travel. Many were also not attending at all and given the show’s quality I applaud them for this decision. This especially included a handful female winners, like Winslet and Chastain and same for Jennifer Coolidge whose awards glory started here and has been going on since. I still find it baffling by the way how Balfe did not score an Oscar nomination. She was so incredibly good in „Belfast“. Here, she was nominated at least. Jamie Dornan also did not get the Oscar nomination, but this was not a huge surprise. He was really present that night here though, also gave out awards where they joked a bit about other films from his past that were really famous, but not particularly critically acclaimed gently-speaking. There Campion could have learned how to handle this with humor.

The best young actor category went perhaps a bit surprisingly to Jude Hill from „Belfast“, especially if we look at how he was up against the lead from the Best Picture Oscar winner and also against Rachel Zegler, who after all won a Golden Globe for her portrayal. But good for Hill and I also liked his speech and I don’t always do so with kids‘ acceptance speeches. The way he thanked Branagh in the end was awesome. I appreciate the latter too, especially if we look at how he won’t shy away from casting people that for various reasons have a hard time getting cast in awards movies. Just take Dornan and Hammer. Branagh just does as he pleases and does not care what the general public thinks and I adore that, also how he gets great performances out of them all the time. Hopefully, he can maybe include Kevin Spacey too at some point. Anyway, the critics really loved „Belfast“ that year looking at all the wins and nominations and I wonder how close it got to winning the big prize. The only positive aspect I can mention from „The Power of the Dog“ would be Jesse Plemons (getting in at the Oscars). This stems from my love for „Breaking Bad“ of course. But back to this earlier ceremony now: I liked that they, unlike other awards shows, did not clutter the ceremony with unnecessary music performances, but kept it essential and focused on the awards. Nonetheless, there is also a very, very negative thing, namely that they announced so many categories as gap fillers pretty much that did not get any screen time, but the nominees were just shown on the screen and the winner was highlighted. Not as part of the show, but announced to the audience. That felt really disrespectful to both winners and nominees. And it was even big categories, like Best Score (that once more went to my fellow German Hans Zimmer), Best Television Movie, Best Foreign Language Film (all about Japan that year) or the screenplay categories. I think it was both, can’t check back now, but definitely Campion’s win. Still kinda good we did not have to see her on the screen again.

Another major criticism here from me is directed at the idea that they made this a fairly political show with the Russia/Ukraine conflict, which was still relatively new and fresh. I am not saying that what they said was wrong in terms of who they support or allegiances (even if Selenskyj is getting a gigantic amount of undeserved praise if we look at his fairly radical views). I am just saying that I am never fond of it when shows like this include so much politics. I am not only talking about the random inclusions of the situation during acceptance speeches. Keaton mentioned it as well which disappointed me because I like him, even if his fake humility comment was awesome, plus Bakalova and Billy Crystal (who really played Hervé Villechaize once during his career haha). Also it was just so random at the very end when they made the announcement of the biggest category of the night all about politics too and for whatever reason a pretty successful American Football coach was there to announce the winner, together with a Ukrainian woman and both felt absolutely wrong for the occasion. Then again, it fit kinda nicely with the awful „The Power of the Dog“ winning said category. On the television side, „Succession“ and „Ted Lasso“ were the big winners, also each took home three of the four acting category wins. Only „Squid Game“ was a little bit of a spoiler there. I am not against it, even if I have not (yet?) seen „Succession“. Still baffled by how the Golden Globes completely ignored „Ted Lasso“ recently. Oh yeah and a Culkin won a Critics Choice Award. That is quite something, even if it was not Macaulay, but the physical resemblance is undeniable.

On a completely different note, I already mentioned Billy Crystal, who received a lifetime achievement award. Halle Berry got a non-competitive trophy too, one with a bizarre name though. What came to mind first for me was how she looks incredibly amazing given her now also fairly processed age as she is deep into her 50s. So yeah,I think this is pretty much it then. There are other okay moments (like the boy from Minari) I could elaborate on, that were unfortunately not as frequent as the negative moments from the show, but eventually I have to come to an end. I just want to say it makes me a bit sad to see what happened to Taika Waititi since his Hollywood breakthrough. Fame has certainly not worked in his favor there. Jimmy Kimmel, on the other hand, has always been unbearable. The epitome of a Hollywood sheep with literally not the slightest bit of individual creativity at all. On a more positive and actually impressive side, we learnt it is actually possible to be on contractions from pregnancy and still direct your cast at the very same time. Not bad. Carey Mulligan who won the year before and handed out an award this time I am a bit undecided on. I think I liked her more a few years ago. Her newest film is also an abomination and sad to see she is a part of this. Still, she looked quite nice. Praise in that department goes also out to Coral Peña and Skye Aurelia for being easy on the eye, even if these two weren’t a big part of the night admittedly. Eventually, it can also be said that some songs/music inclusions/music mentions were fairly nice here, even if those were very brief and perhaps not everybody understood them right away. I probably also did not get them every single time, but what I got was worth it. So yeah, I finished this review with some brainstorming style, but eventually I give the outcome a massive thumbs-down due to some very negative inclusions that just made the good aspects forgettable and ruined the night overall. Skip the watch.