The Golden Globe Awards show has attempted to rebrand after it was boycotted and taken off the air in 2022. I hoped to see, at the least, a fresh show because of the new panel of journalists curating it. I was unfortunately underwhelmed by the show, mostly due to the cringe-worthy performance by the host, and because the show was, to be plain, extremely boring.
Jo Koy, who hosted the show, brought a bit of entertainment, but it wasn’t for good reasons like, for example, being funny or charismatic; his performance totally bombed and that’s one of the only things that made the show funny.
I definitely was laughing at him and not with him. His jokes seemed like he hadn’t even watched the movies, and it was obvious they didn’t sit well with the crowd.
His joke about “Barbie” was uncouth and completely disregarded the film’s whole point to make a joke about it being about “big plastic” body parts.
I did pity him though. I know celebrities often can’t take jokes about themselves, they’re a notoriously difficult crowd to please – that doesn’t excuse his misogynistic joke, though. He got some online backlash that was warranted but maybe a little over the top.
Koy is the top story about the Globes this year, but honestly the hosting wasn’t the worst thing; the crowd of disappointed faces during the host sections were funny enough to make up for the unfunny jokes.
The award presenters were as mediocre as always; they weren’t bad, there just wasn’t much special about it. None of them were really funny, though Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig were the most memorable presenters with their tech malfunction and uncontrollable dancing joke stunt. The short jokes the award presenters made seemed manufactured, and too focused on remaining polite to actually be good.
The acceptance speeches were boring but that isn’t new, they only give the awardee’s a minute to talk, so during the course of the show I heard probably 1000 “thank yous” and not much else in terms of the speeches.
I did like Lily Gladstone’s, who won best actress in a drama for her performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Her acceptance speech was poignant and attention-catching, it was refreshing after just “thank yous” the whole show.
One notable change in the show this year is the addition of the award category for box office achievement. I don’t think it was a necessary addition in the slightest: we already know and recognize the most popular films for being the most popular, do we really need to recognize it in award form? Everyone will remember those films anyways for being seen by so many people. Despite this, I am glad that “Barbie” won this, because it didn’t win any other awards despite it’s uniqueness and the stellar acting by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling
I want to move on to the winners of the awards. I agreed with multiple wins, I was rooting for “Poor Things” (which won best picture: comedy) and Emma Stone who won best actress in a comedy for the same film. I was glad that Paul Giamatti won best actor in a comedy for his role in “The Holdovers,” which was an extremely charming film. I was also happy to see Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White win best actor and actress in a comedy show for their roles in “The Bear” which is a phenomenal show on Hulu that I highly recommend.
I disagreed with some of those who won as well. I believe that “Oppenheimer” won way too many awards. It’s true there were a lot of award worthy films this year, and Oppenheimer was one of them, but there were multiple films up for awards that I liked more than Oppenheimer that didn’t win. I liked “Killers of the Flower Moon” much more.
I would have rather seen any of the nominees for supporting actor win than Robert Downey Jr. He’s a great actor, but his performance in “Oppenheimer” wasn’t nearly as notable as any of his fellow nominees’ performances, like Robert De Niro in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” or Willem Dafoe in “Poor Things”.
I thought that “Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse” was phenomenal in terms of both animation and just being a great and unique superhero movie. I wanted it to win for best animated picture, but “The Boy and the Heron” won. I have a bad feeling Spider-Man was overlooked just because it was a superhero movie.
“The Boy and the Heron” director Hayao Miyazaki is an amazing director and Studio Ghibli films have been horribly overlooked for wins in past years, but “The Boy and the Heron” is far from their best, though it was very good.
Now that I’ve spouted all of my negativity, I’d like to make it clear that this award show is not stand-alone in its boring quality – award shows are almost always like that. This was a great year for film, and all those nominated and awarded deserved the recognition they got. The show wasn’t necessarily better or worse than previous ones, just strange. With the new category, the strange humor from a failing host and the disappointed crowd, and even the lack of a televised red carpet, it was definitely different from other award shows and previous years of the Globes, for better or for worse. At the least, it was something unique.
