The MTV Movie Awards

Either I'm getting old, or the MTV Movie Awards really sucked. Since I'm not ready to conclude that I'm old just yet, I'm going with "they sucked."

I've never seen the host, Sarah Silverman, perform before... all I knew of her before watching the show was that she was controversial and that she is Jimmy Kimmel's girlfriend. After squirming through her opening monologue, I thought she was awful and I was very unimpressed.

The crowd didn't seem to be laughing much either... the only reaction they gave was loud cheering when the jokes revolved around Paris Hilton heading off to jail (and then the camera panned to Paris, smiling weakly as she sat in the audience). There's a high possibility that Sarah was just totally out of her element - she seemed to be moving clumsily and uncomfortable in a dress and heels and even copped to being wary of MTV's penchant for throwing "over-the-top" shows. Her stylist should be fired - the two dresses she wore were very wrong for her body type (the black dress she wore was poorly fitted to boot), and I almost felt bad for her. Until I remembered how much she must be raking in, then I stopped feeling bad. All in all, it just seemed like she was trying too hard, and her little-girl voice grated on my nerves after 5 minutes.

Drama surrounded the awards as always... in the weeks leading up to the show, a catfight played out in the tabloids between Cameron Diaz (ex-girlfriend of Justin Timberlake) and Jessica Biel (his current flame) because they wanted to avoid each other, but each wanted the walk the red carpet as late as possible (which is apparently a status symbol in Hollywood). I'm not sure who won out on that one. Other red carpet mayhem included the surprise appearance by Paris Hilton, literally hours before she started her jail sentence. After the hatred that was evident from the crowd that night, she's probably happy to be away from the public for a while!

My vote for "most awkward moment," however, was when Jack Nicholson accepted his award for Best Villain for his role in "The Departed" as mobster Frank Costello. He acted surprised, and then slowly got out of his seat (next to Adam Singer) and took his sweet time getting to the stage. He then fumbled his way through a bizarre speech which ranged from thanking our troops overseas to dropping the F-bomb to gibberish. It was very, very obvious that he was either on drugs or drunk. It wasn't funny, it wasn't cool - it was hard to watch.

Johnny Depp also showed up (I was shocked) to receive a few awards for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. As he typically shies away from these sorts of events, it was surprising that he showed up, but not surprising that he continued to sport that bizarre outfit he always seems to have on: a grunge-inspired flannel tied around his waist underneath a sportcoat. What IS that? He also looked extremely pale - like he had just come from filming Edward Scissorhands 2 or something.

I won't go into detail about "the kiss" shared between Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen as that seems to be the focus of all other write-ups. I will say that it still catches me off-guard to hear Sacha speak with a British accent as I'm so used to Borat-speak coming out of his mouth!

I've always thought it was weird that MTV started having a Movie Awards show, and I hold firm in my belief that the Video Awards are consistently better. Now we've got until the fall to wait for those - perhaps Paris will be the inspiration for jokes again by that point - I'm sure she or some other celebrity will be in jail come September.

For more 2007 MTV Movie Awards tomfoolery:
- A detailed account of the show by E! Online
- Behind-the-scenes moments captured by USA Today

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