John Travolta didn’t have to memorize the names of all the Oscar nominees. He didn’t even have to memorize the names of all of the performers of the Best Original Song nominees, since he was only introducing one of them. He didn’t even have to memorize Idina Menzel’s name. It was right there on the teleprompter. Yet here is how it came out: “Please welcome the ‘Wicked’-ly talented, one and only Adele Dazim.”
Adele Dazim? Maybe it was an anagram. For flubbing 10 seconds of patter, Travolta won the Not Even Close award, though there was intense competition. The 86th Annual Academy Awards ceremony was dubbed “a celebration of heroes.” A more accurate label would have been “Open Mic Night” at the Dolby Theatre.
Cate Blanchett, the picture of elegance and icy intelligence, accepted her award for Best Actress from Daniel Day-Lewis with these words: “Thank you, Mr. Day-Lewis, from you it exacerbates this honor and blows it right out of the ballpark.” Honey, if you don’t know the meaning of a word (exacerbate = make worse), don’t test it out in front of a couple hundred million viewers.
Zac Efron, a professional performer from the age of 15, introduced singer Karen O. as an “aspiration.” Kim Novak, the star of “Vertigo,” who appeared to have a coat hanger inserted in her face vertically across her mouth, was trembly and weird, seemingly losing her place on the teleprompter. Harrison Ford was tremblier and weirder, looking mildly shocked to be on stage in the first place as he glared maniacally at his lines. One of the many dull montages, a salute to “everyday heroes” that gathered clips of movies about historical figures, included people who weren’t exactly everyday (Lincoln, Gandhi) and people who couldn’t have been heroes, since they were fictional creations who didn’t actually exist (Ben-Hur, Atticus Finch of “To Kill a Mockingbird”).
Then there was Ellen DeGeneres. Our humble host gave off a friendly, mellow vibe, but seemed to have written her bland and tired act in the limo on the way over. (“Let’s see, it’s been raining? Maybe I’ll do a joke about how Angelenos over-react to that.”) She slipped in a cutting line about how the Academy would either reward “12 Years a Slave” or be denounced as racist, but that was about the last thing she said that could ruffle a feather.
After that, Ellen made the deadly error of thinking she could come up with found comedy bits simply by wandering through the auditorium chatting up stars. She gave Bradley Cooper a couple of lottery tickets as a consolation prize for not winning Best Supporting Actor. The bit went nowhere: Cooper clearly wasn’t expecting to have to do improv comedy. Nor was Matthew McConaughey able to do her job for her when she tried to get him to riff about his weight-loss secrets for “Dallas Buyers Club.”
It was a night about Making History, though, and DeGeneres did indeed secure a place for herself, in the same chapter as the Snow White-Rob Lowe “Proud Mary” routine (1989), David Letterman’s Oprah-Uma bit (1994) and James Franco being absent from his own body while co-hosting the 2011 show with Anne Hathaway. Ellen ordered some pizzas, had them delivered to the set and found that she forgot to order a punchline to go with them. She wandered the aisles, having a hard time finding anyone she could give the slices to, because it turns out famous people in evening dress and dazzling gowns don’t actually want a gooey wet tomato-y thing on their laps while they’re on national television. Harrison Ford wanted a piece, though: He was done for the night, and seemed to have excellent cause to have a case of the munchies.
The sweetest moments — Lupita Nyongo’s lovely, graceful, disarming speech after she won Best Supporting Actress for “12 Years a Slave”; her director Steve McQueen’s line that “everyone deserves to live, not just to survive”; McConaughey’s typically kooky yet genuinely endearing remarks about the importance of God, gratitude and trying to better yourself — will play well on the highlight reels, but on the actual broadcast, they were lost amid endless montages, inane presenters’ banter and amateur-hour flubs. Hey, Oscar, watching actors take a group selfie isn’t actually entertainment. Next year, could you maybe think up some funny jokes before showtime?