The verdict is in and the Golden Globes Awards on Sunday was an unqualified disaster.
Despite non-stop hype from CBS — Hollywood is back! Diversity! Jo Koy! (who?) — the broadcast fell flat on its face, with even the mainstream entertainment media deeming it as “unfunny,” a “near-total disaster,” and a “new low.”
Sunday’s primetime broadcast was meant to be a reboot of sorts for the beleaguered and rating-challenged awards show. CBS took over from NBC, seeking to rebrand the annual party as a new and improved version of the quasi-shady and ethically suspect awards-season ritual that just two years ago became the black sheep of Hollywood.
But despite the strong presence of numerous A-list stars, not to mention the Barbenheimer, the show struck many as a fiasco.
Vanity Fair magazine — not exactly a publication disinclined toward having a good time at a celebrity party — called the broadcast a “near-total disaster,” describing host Jo Koy’s strenuous opening monologue as a “horrid, sophomoric mishmash of lazy jokes” that failed to elicit much laughter.
“A cynical, grasping ceremony is nothing new for the Globes, but this year felt particularly desperate,” the magazine’s awards show axiom Richard Lawson concluded.
The New York Post called Sunday’s broadcast “godawful” and a “new low” for the show.
“Wow, was this shindig agonizing. The evening was unbearably unfunny and had just two or three great speeches over three long hours,” the paper concluded.
“The best reform the Globes could possibly make next, for the sanity of everybody at home, is to just call it quits.”
Britain’s The Telegraph called the show a “disaster.”
“This abominable orgy of backslapping and anti-humour has no reason to exist,” the paper said.
Sunday’s three-hour telecast crowned Oppenheimer and Poor Things as the best movies of the year, while also heaping honors on the series Succession and The Bear.
Barbie was mostly shut out, though it did manage to snag the Globes’ new award called “best cinematic and box office achievement” — a category clearly designed to juice viewership.
Last year’s show managed to draw a paltry 6.3 million viewers — an all-time low for the Globes.
