The academy loves box office - and drama. The absolute holy grail is a drama with a main character undergoing some form of 'change', saddled with at least somewhat favorable reviews cresting the $100 million mark. As case in point, please see The Greatest Show on Earth. The greatest what? This film, absolutely huge in its time, is now largely forgotten and is recognized as a marginal film at best. Yet it came away with Best Picture in 1953. You know that is the case when even TCM relegates it to the 3am time slot. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of that tainted financial coin, are acclaimed films that sink at the box office and quickly lose favor with voters, becoming long forgotten before the red carpet ever goes outside the Kodak Theatre. Expect Nine to fall into this category - the Weinstein Bros. having already shifted their much diminished muscle behind Inglorious Basterds.
But has the highest grossing comedy of all-time - The Hangover - done enough to receive a Best Picture nomination come next month? You’d think so, considering the newly-expanded category now has to find ten worthy candidates, and the pic in question delivered the holy triumvirate of bank, acclaim and audience approval. But it has something rather major working against it: it’s a comedy, and no comedy since Tootsie almost 30 years ago has come anywhere near Best Picture.
Comedy is harder than drama. That oft-trotted adage seems to go against the grain when it comes to Oscar. Its worth is even devalued at the Golden Globes, where they spin out comedy and drama into their own respective camps, lest humor in some way contaminate the serious art of emoting. Let us ask ourselves (and academy voters), why the fascination with roles that require an actor to be ‘uglied up’, play the downtrodden and/or mentally challenged? Surely hiding behind a pane of makeup is easier than being totally naked before the camera and requiring an audience to do that most difficult of tasks - to come in completely cold, depressed, upset, and finding themselves in the midst of a global recession - and laugh.
The academy fears above all else losing their audience. Of their selections being a total and utter failure to tap into the zeitgeist of the time. The Dark Knight failing to to win a nom in last year’s ceremony caused rampant whispers of this among the chattering classes of the blogosphere. This was painted as an example of the institution as gleefully out of touch with the popcorn munchers who keep the industry going. Look to this as reason enough for a bone to be tossed this time around, and expect to see Star Trek in the mix.
So how about something likewise to the genre of comedy, to what might have been the best mainstream comedy since Four Weddings? To an academy that sees worth in such mainstream Hollywood trash as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, surely The Hangover has fulfilled everything it holds dear? But if not, I’ll take a nomination for the hilarious In the Loop in its stead.
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