Another year, another Academy Awards to put us plain folk in our place. At the podium, celebrities will spout crocodile-tears for the golden trophy, and on the red carpet, Charlize Theron's midriff will be draped in a designer version of our college tuition. For this country's finest performers and filmmakers, the glitz and glory are well-deserved perks, but for the ordinary filmgoer, the ceremony's creed of self-congratulation may feel a bit lopsided.
That's because, as any ordinary Joe knows from experience, Hollywood is a two-faced industry. If you've ever plunked down 10 clams for a Duece Bigalow sequel (it's alright, we're all friends here), or found yourself distressed by the number of films with the word "Vs." in their title, you may not even recognize the smug air of integrity that this Sunday's ceremony will likely exude. Where's the money-grubbing, soul-snatching Tinseltown we all know and love? Where's the industry that, for every wonderful weeper like "Brokeback Mountain," burns us with opuses of awfulness along the lines of, say, "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"?
To remind everyone of Hollywood's darker side (and provide the dash of revenge that we little people thrive on), the Annual Golden Raspberry Awards will do just fine. In their 25th year of preempting the Oscars with a mock ceremony, the Razzies will again make it their business to "dis-honor" the worst that American cinema has to offer, which seems to be in consistently greater abundance than its output of quality pictures.
In fact, Hollywood's penchant for celluloid baloney is so reliable that this reviewer hasn't even seen a single nominee for the 2005 worst picture Razzie, yet can still assert that they would all make lousy cat litter, let alone entertaining movies. If a choice must be made, however, "Son of the Mask," a most unnecessary sequel from the deep recesses of the Hollywood rendering plant, looked downright stinky, and I hear it featured a digitized dancing baby. Needless to say, it gets my vote.
Past its mission statement of vilification (their web site smiley face screams, "Cremating cinematic crap for 25 years!"), the Razzies operate in much the same way as the Academy Awards. Noms for the worst picture category tend to sweep the whole show, making out like the laurel-studded "Ben Hur" category of dunce filmmaking. "The Dukes of Hazzard," for example, is up for seven Razzies this year including worst film and worst on-screen couple, thanks to Jessica Simpon and her Daisy Dukes. As the Oscars usually contend, it takes a village to make a good movie, and the Razzies counter that the same goes for an exquisitely bad one.
The Golden Raspberry is also no stranger to legacy. If you thought Meryl Streep had a stranglehold over Academy voters, take a look at poor Sylvester Stallone, who over the course of a single decade was nominated a whopping seven times. His action star grimace and trademark lack of skill earned him the illustrious honor of being named the Worst Actor of the Century, proof that as far as the Razzies are concerned, once you go bad, you never go back.
If the Raspberries seem harsh, they're meant to be. The award itself, a spray painted citrus fruit with an estimated value of $4.95, recalls that puckered up face that only a truly terrible and usually costly night at the movies can conjure up. But besides serving as a tacky insult, the Razzie seems to be an emblem of solidarity in a tough industry where money talks, artists struggle, and movie audiences are notoriously unpredictable. The Hollywood that banks on terrible remakes is the same Hollywood that gives us our Academy masterpieces, after all, and with fingers on the pulse of both industry machinery and public fickleness (this year's new category: Most Tiresome Tabloid Target), the Golden Raspberries disparage but also affirm the notions of a business and populace in which the line between fame and infamy is about the width of a swizzle stick.
Last year's ceremony provided the best example of said Razzie unity when Halle Berry took the unprecedented step of accepting her worst actress award for "Catwoman" in person (I assure you, far more tears were shed by that film's audience than Ms. Berry spilled during her Oscar win the previous year). To thunderous applause, she posed in double-fisted triumph between her Golden Raspberry and Academy statuette in an appropriate fusion of Tinseltown's two halves.
So if the sugar of the Oscars seems a tad too sweet, balance it out with the tart of the Golden Raspberries. The yin and yang of the movie biz can't be immortalized any better than with its annual expose of the worst of Hollywood. A certain American actor of "On the Waterfront" and gauze-in-the-mouth Godfather fame once said, "The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money." Such an honest admission deserves an honest reward, and, low and behold, for the rambunctious remake of "The Island of Dr. Moreau," even the incomparable Marlon Brando earned himself his very own, bona-fide Razzie.