'La La Land' vs. 'Moonlight': Why the Oscars don't really matter

There is very little enthusiasm for the Oscars this year. According to a recent poll, something like 60 percent of the country can't name a single one of the Best Picture nominees. It's not that the movies aren't terrific, most of them are. And a few, like La La Land and Hidden Figures, have become big breakout hits.

This year there isn't the tension of #OscarsSoWhite in the air, or a host like Chris Rock who can make hay out of it. Instead we have the fairly middle-of-the road Jimmy Kimmel. And there are very few races which have real suspense about the results, except for maybe Best Picture, but I'll get to that in a moment.

It may be in part because of Trump. He has so consumed the news cycle and kept the populace on edge, that the Oscars seem like a quaint and unimportant distraction right now. But I also think -- not unlike the Miss America pageant -- they have come to mean less than they used to.

It's not the argument that the movies reflect critical snobbery and not audiences' faves, after all, big blockbusters like The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road and Gravity have competed for top awards in recent years. I think viewers are just getting hipper to how inherently flawed the whole process is.

People win awards because they're due or because of the narrative behind their nomination. Edgy or interesting work and films either don't get recognized at all or almost always lose to the safer, more self-congratulatory movies.

Yes, sometimes an Oscar win can mean a lot more exposure and commercial success, especially for smaller films, but the way that many people consume movies now (on demand and streaming), most viewers will likely wait to catch award winners in the comfort of their own homes, if they haven't already bothered to see them in theaters.

Even the old school career bump that actors and actresses get from winning an Oscar doesn't appear to exist anymore. For every Lupita Nyong'o, there are a lot of Jennifer Hudsons and Moniques.

Now, I recognize the irony of me making this argument -- for the past several years I have breathlessly anticipated the nominees and weighed in on the potential results with my friend Brian Wezowicz. I am an unapologetic movie nerd, an obsessive consumer of this stuff. I like to root for the films I love and the performances that moved me. But the fact is, not unlike with the sports teams I root for, the people I want to win rarely do and when they don't it feels like more of a shrug than a sneer. If I'd had my way Bill Murray and Sylvester Stallone would have won acting Oscars by now, but it isn't up to me, and it never will be.

Speaking of Bill Murray, he used to do this amazing bit when he was a cast-member on Saturday Night Live (and would frequently resurrect it when he'd come back to host) where he would sardonically give his Oscar picks for each year. Besides calling the Supporting races irrelevant, he would always use comical arguments that had nothing to do with quality to reach his conclusions. And one year, he refashioned the race to feature nothing but former and current Not Ready for Prime-Time Players.

Bill Murray's Oscar predictions 

I have been thinking about the bit a lot as I've been reading a lot about the backlash to La La Land and grumblings that Moonlight -- a film I thought was far superior, and many critics agree -- should upset it, but probably won't. At the end of the day I think La La Land will triumph, and probably for reasons that have little to do with which film is 'better.'

It's inherently absurd to compare movies like this in the first place -- one is an expertly crafted, frothy, throwback musical and the other is heartbreaking, and fiercely urgent coming of age film. It's not like awards should only go to films that are deep. And there have been plenty of examples of films that lost that have gone on to greater glory (Pulp Fiction or Citizen Kane for example), and of course many classics never even get considered. Guess who never won an Oscar for directing? Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman or Stanley Kubrick.

La La Land is the kind of movie that wins Oscars. For better or worse. It has big, likable stars. It's a gorgeous production. It's romantic about Hollywood. And it's a lot of fun. Like most movies like this, if you dig a little deeper, you can find things to quibble about -- although I am not in the camp that believes that the film is suggesting that only a white man can "save" jazz, just like I don't think Back to the Future was seriously trying to suggest that a white man taught Chuck Berry everything he knows.

I honestly think the movie is just a victim of our current culture of in-the-moment re-evaluation. It peaked early, earned nearly universal praise, so naturally people would start to take potshots at it and trash it. It'll still win -- it's record tying nominations proves it has plenty of support -- but it may not stand the test of time, since now it's becoming a movie you have to defend liking.

Moonlight, on the other hand, has gratefully not endured any revisionist criticism. Unfortunately, though, despite all its acclaim, it has not caught on commercially. I have never met someone who's seen it and not liked it immensely, and I sincerely hope it achieves cult classic status. I sincerely believe it will hold up and will be oft-cited as a landmark.

Would an Oscar help it achieve that? Maybe. But even if it doesn't pull off an upset on Sunday, its fans won't be any less passionate about it.

I am still going to watch the Oscars, because I'm old school and I'm sucker for moving and/or politically charged speeches. But no matter what happens on the show, Moonlight will still be the Best Picture of the year.