Live from Los Angeles, the MTV Movie & TV Awards provide a bit of that award season feel in the middle of the year. Here are the parts we liked:
1) Unique Categories
Best Kiss? Scariest Moment? You won’t find those awards at the Oscars. While the Academy may have prestige, MTV brings an exciting – and more importantly, fun – ‘ceremony’.
2) Sneak Peeks
Many look forward to the MTV Movie Awards purely for new trailers of upcoming blockbusters. This year’s broadcast included early looks at It, Wonder Woman, Spiderman: Homecoming, and Transformers: The Last Knight. All are sure to be Summer hits.
3) Diversity Is Key
Black-ish and Hidden Figures went home with some of the night’s highest honors. Get Out fueled the funniest bits. Moonlight‘s LGBT cast won Best Kiss. Congresswoman Maxine Waters presented to thunderous applause. While never getting explicitly political, the ceremony celebrated the different kinds of people, which is always important in Trump’s America.
4) TV Came to the Party
New this year were television awards. This definitely added more star power, if nothing else. My personal favorite TV moment was This Is Us‘ win for Best Tearjerker. Stranger Things won Show of the Year.
5) Fast & Furious Cements Its Legacy
Vin Diesel and other Fast & Furious franchise cast were on hand to pick up this year’s Generation Award, a trophy that typically goes to an individual performer. After Pitbull performed the series theme song, the “family” gave a nice acceptance speech. Love them or hate them, the Fast flicks are here to stay.
6) Recut Trailers
Host Adam Devine’s only funny bit was a recurring joke in which the Best Movie nominees were shown as totally different genres. Logan as a road trip comedy and Rouge One as a love story were my personal highlights.
Now, the parts we didn’t enjoy:
1) Adam Devine Bombs
Adam Devine is awkward and unfunny, and watching five minutes of tonight’s show makes that clear. I’ve never been a fan of his comedy, so when I saw that he got a hosting gig, I knew I’d hate it. Whether it be his opening as Beast (from Beauty and the Beast) or his dumb bit when he dressed up in his “Spiderman Jammies,” Devine fails miserably. His weird sense of humor is a horrible idea for an awards show of any type, even MTV, which tries to be intentionally goofy.
2) Best Actress Is No More
For the first time, the MTV Movie Awards didn’t differentiate categories for men and women. Instead, all nominees were grouped under “Best Actor In…” Now, yes, from a purely feminist perspective, this makes perfect sense; This isn’t sports. Are the acting jobs different for the two genders? However, I feel like there are so many deserving men and women, and to award them in just one mere category would mean you would have to cut the amount of winners (and amount of nominees) in half. Even for the casual MTV Awards, it’s annoying to see many snubs due to this change. I hope the Oscars don’t follow suit.
TV and City 