No Oscar For Oscars
This year's Oscars show set two dubious records: It was the longest Academy Awards ceremony on record and pulled in the lowest TV ratings in history.
The Sunday night telecast drew the lowest rating ever, according to Nielsen Media Research. Its 25.4 rating was worse than the last year's previous low, 26.2.
ABC estimated the telecast drew 41.8 million viewers, down from the 42.9 million people who watched in 2001. The network said the show's length contributed to the low ratings.
The record four-hour, 16-minute broadcast won high marks for such moments as Halle Berry's emotionally charged acceptance speech, the surprise appearance of perennial Oscar no-show Woody Allen and the stirring dignity of Sidney Poitier's tribute.
And reviewers were nearly unanimous in recognizing the historic import of the evening, as black performers claimed both lead-acting awards for the first time ever - Berry for "Monster's Ball" and Denzel Washington for "Training Day."
But critics were just as universal in their conclusion that the show was undone by its seemingly endless duration, which kept East Coast viewers up way past midnight and contributed to the record low ratings. And there was wide agreement that an air of pretension clung to the proceedings.
"It was punishingly long," TV Guide's chief critic, Matt Roush, told Reuters, adding that aside from the salute to Poitier as Hollywood's first black superstar, the show suffered from "too many tributes."
"Sidney Poitier's tribute was dignified, but it was buried in a bunch of other self-congratulatory fillers that diminished the impact of the moments that counted," Roush said. "Yes, there was history made, but as a TV show, they did everything possible to keep you from being there when history was made, especially on the East Coast."
Indeed, hard-core movie fans in the Eastern time zone were forced to stay up to nearly 1 a.m. to see "A Beautiful Mind" win for best picture. The previous longest Oscar broadcast was in 2000, when the show ran for four hours, nine minutes.
Washington Post critic Tom Shales opined that the show "was rife with highlights and powerful emotional moments, and yet there was something sodden and leaden about the whole seemingly endless ordeal."
The headline of the review from online entertainment magazine Salon.com was more succinct: "Oscars 2002: Somebody make it stop!"
Host Whoopi Goldberg, who raised eyebrows for her often-ribald 1999 turn as Oscar emcee, drew mostly tepid reviews for her toned-down performance on Sunday night, though critics loved her zany entrance on a trapeze.
Like Roush, Shales said the Poitier tribute "seemed the right gesture at the right time," but said the lifetime achievement award given to Robert Redford "appeared premature and not particularly merited," while it "seemed to take forever" for director Arthur Hiller to accept his honorary prize.
Reviews in the entertainment trade papers were generally more forgiving, with the Hollywood Reporter gushing the show was "full of surprises and brilliantly conceived." Daily Variety said the show, packaged by producer Laura Ziskin, "went on an emotional journey that connected L.A. with New York and America with its film history."
Critics generally applauded Goldberg's grand, gaudy entrance at the show's opening -- descending on a trapeze dressed in a feathered get-up Variety described as "space-age brothelwear" in a sendup to the burlesque-musical "Moulin Rouge." Otherwise, the reviews of her performance mixed.
A number of critics noted a measure of segregation in the camera shots of audience members, with the same handful of black actors shown laughing each time Goldberg cracked one of her numerous racially tinged jokes.
Other low points singled out by various critics included Tom Cruise's solemn opening remarks about going on with Oscars in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks -- Roush found it "self-important" -- and best supporting actress winner Jennifer Connelly reciting her acceptance speech from a sheet of paper.