Oscars Review: Chris Rock Says Hollywood is Racist; 'Spotlight' and 'Mad Max' Win Big

The movies were nearly overshadowed during this year’s Oscar Awards ceremony by the controversy surrounding the lack of nominations for black actors. Taking the stage to the heroic strains of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” host Chris Rock had the daunting task of acknowledging the legitimate grievances and making the assembled Hollywood audience laugh. He felt obliged to keep up the pressure throughout the show, inserting jokes and taped bits addressing both the lighter and heavier sides of a situation he summed up at the start of the show as: “You’re damn right Hollywood’s racist.”

The opening monologue was uneven, as it almost had to be. Referring to the presentation as “the White People’s Choice Awards” was an easy joke; “This year, in the In Memoriam package, it’s just going to be black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies” — that was a good, hard joke. A running joke about selling Girl Scout cookies for his children? Not so hilarious. His intro, “Please welcome nominee Rachel McAdams and a shoulda-been nominee, Michael B. Jordan”? Grimly hilarious.

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Rock was tough on the whiteness of the Hollywood establishment, but reserved his toughest contempt, perhaps, for Jada Pinkett-Smith and her boycott of the Oscars: “Jada said she’s not coming, protesting. I’m like, isn’t she on a TV show? Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties: I wasn’t invited.” That sounded, ah, personal. By contrast, Rock gave the biggest film-career push Kevin Hart will probably ever receive at the Oscars.

Rock kept the lack-of-diversity theme running throughout the broadcast, whether coming out of a commercial (saying, “Oh, we’re black” instead of “back”) or taking a camera to what he termed his “favorite movie theater in Compton” for some on-the-street interviews as Kool and the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging” played underneath him. Rock captured the genteel, liberal-world institutional racism most cogently when he joked, “Damn right Hollywood’s racist: a racist that you’ve grown accustomed to. Hollywood is sorority racist. It’s like, ‘We like you, Rhonda, but you’re not a Kappa.’ That’s how Hollywood is.”

Related: Oscar Host Chris Rock Delivers Searing, Hilarious Opening Monologue

And the mere fact that I’ve spent this much of the review talking about Rock and his task suggests how much it dominated the proceedings, which had a lot more going on as well. Like the Mad Max domination of the technical awards. Like that awful James Bond song whose existence had previously escaped me: Sam Smith singing the florid “Writing’s On The Wall” — which ended up winning the Oscar. (When combined with Dave Grohl trilling “Blackbird” during the In Memoriam segment, it wasn’t a great night for live music.) Like that failed new experiment of running a crawl beneath the winners who wanted to thank a long list of people they wouldn’t have time to announce in their acceptance speeches. (Although I did love that, upon winning the animated feature award for Inside Out, Pete Doctor’s text crawl included a message to, I presume, his kids: “OK yes, let’s get a dog.”)

One of those classic only-on-the-Oscars moments occurred when Vice President Joe Biden came onstage to Indiana Jones-style music, modestly waved off a standing ovation with, “I’m the least qualified man here tonight,” delivered a serious message about sexual assault and urged viewers to go to ItsOnUs.org for more information, and introduced Lady Gaga to sing and receive her own standing ovation, along with real-life survivors of rape, really delivering the emotional goods with “’Til It Happens To You.”

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Best moments of non-Rock humor included presenters Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe for proving to be a nicely deadpan duo, putting each other down, and presenter Tina Fey, for faking drunkenness with Steve Carell. Lamest moment of non-Rock humor: A costume Revenant bear clapping in the audience; even the film’s cast were shown barely restraining a unified eye-roll. No, I take that back: Sacha Baron Cohen, flogging his old Ali G persona (the raised black glove an homage to the 1968 Olympics protest?) in an example of how certain kinds of race humor really do not age well — that was more lame.

Oh, right: the big winners. The Revenant, for nabbing director (Alejandro Inarritu) and actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) awards, Spotlight for snatching best film from the jaws of The Revenant, and Mad Max for almost running the table in the technical-awards categories, were the big victors.

Related: 'The Revenant’ Star Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Gets His Oscar

Chris Rock closed out the night by telling millions of viewers, “Black lives matter” even as the Spotlight win drove home the message of resistance to sexual abuse raised by Biden and Gaga earlier. It was a fitting end to a late Oscar night steeped in the issues of the day.