Jason Sudeikis passes the test at MTV Movie Awards
By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star
Local-boy-makes-good Jason Sudeikis hosted the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night, doing no injury to any hopes he might have someday of hosting an actual awards program.
The strangest, most overhyped and least spontaneous awards show on television has become something of a magnet for “Saturday Night Live” cast members, who have hosted or co-hosted the awards show for half of its 20-year run on MTV. I guess that’s fitting, since “SNL” is the least spontaneous live show on TV, but Sudeikis could have made much more of the moment, if only someone had let him.
For all the talk about how boring the Oscars are, could there be anything more predictable than the opening minutes of the MTV Movie Awards? Sudeikis, like hosts before him, was inserted into clips of the movies MTV’s voters think are the year’s awesomest (“Black Swan,” “127 Hours,” “The Social Network,” “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” and, inevitably, “The Hangover”).
That was followed by a monologue heavy on the Governator jokes — “The entire balcony has been fathered by Arnold Schwarzenegger!” — and mentions of movie idols in the audience, although instead of Colin Firth and Julia Roberts, the MTV crowd prefers punchlines about Emma Stone and Kristin Stewart.
Sudeikis’ best line, though, came at his own expense: “I feel qualified to host the Movie Awards,” he said, “because I starred in the major motion picture ‘Hall Pass,’ which was the highest-grossing movie in America on Feb. 26 from 1 to 4 p.m.”
Later, he passed several other future-hosting-gig examinations. He pretended to play the piano while singing rejected theme songs from other alleged major motion pictures (and, in the evening’s low point, praising the breasts of Brooklyn Decker, the aspiring femme fatale of the Adam Sandler movie “Just Go With It”). He also wandered into the audience for the requisite chats with stars real (Bryce Dallas Howard) and fake (Bob the Boulder from “127 Hours”).
The interview segment almost went off the rails when Sudeikis was unable to find a prop behind him while interviewing Bob the Boulder. A crew member’s hand finally appeared in the frame, pointing out the prop.
There were the semi-scripted bits of MTV-style outrageousness, which seemed to have all been pre-approved by the censor. Justin Timberlake, presenting an award with “Black Swan’s” Mila Kunis, grabbed and held onto her breasts, while Kunis retaliated by grabbing his crotch. Whether this was a nod to sexual harassment issues in the news, a shout-out to those of us old enough to remember the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, or just something that sprang out of an MTV writer’s fertile imagination, is hard to say.
Speaking of Timberlake and the Super Bowl, social media went wild at about 9:09 local time when Robert Pattinson, during the presentation a lifetime achievement award for Reese Witherspoon (only on MTV), let loose with an F-bomb. Unlike several other F-bombs dropped in the first hour, this one was not properly bleeped, and many on Twitter wondered whether the Federal Communications Commission would step in. Don’t bet on it — the Supreme Court has limited the FCC’s power to enforce the indecency code on cable TV.
MTV MOVIE AWARD WINNERS
•Best Male Performance: Robert Pattinson, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
•Best Female Performance: Kristen Stewart, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
•Best Villain: Tom Felton, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I”
•Best Jaw-Dropping Moment: “Justin Bieber, Never Say Never”
•Best Fight: Robert Pattinson, Xavier Samuel and Bryce Dallas Howard, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
•Biggest Badass Star: Chloë Grace Moretz, “Kick-Ass”
•Best Scared Performance: Ellen Page, “Inception”
•Best Line: Alexys Nycole Sanchez in “Grown Ups” (“I want to get chocolate wasted!”)
•Best Kiss: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
•Best Breakout Star: Chloë Grace Moretz, “Kick-Ass”
•Best Comedic Performance: Emma Stone, “Easy A”
•Best Movie: “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
Special thanks to Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star and TV Barn, the Kansas City Star's TV website with a free weekly mailing list subscription.
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