VIEW: How Did Oscars Host Billy Crystal Do?

When it was announced that Billy Crystal was going to be the host of the Oscars for a record ninth time, it just seemed to be a mistake. He hasn't been relevant or funny since the '90s. Almost none of his jokes were funny. A lot of them were cheesy and seemed targeted to an older demographic. Which is probably why he was chosen — isn't the Academy made up of a bunch of old white dudes?

Crystal opened the show with his usual montage of clips taken from the nominated films, in which he's inserted himself. This was probably the cutest part, thought it wasn't hilarious. The audience's reaction to some of the jokes was quiet laughter. When the camera panned to actors in the audience for laughter/reaction shots, they seemed to be faking their amusement.

Probably the only somewhat funny joke he had was his bit of showing close-ups of celebrities in the audience and verbalizing what they would be thinking. The camera closed-up on Brangelina, saying they couldn't wait to get home to the kids, which wasn't funny. But then the camera panned to Martin Scorsese, who was one of the cheeriest sports of the night (after all, Hugo did win a bunch of Oscars), and Crystal voiced his probably directorial thought process of, 'Zoom-in, zoom-out, zoom-in, etc.' which was funny.

Then the camera went over to the rough-looking Nick Nolte, and Crystal made the most shocking and possibly offensive joke I've heard him make — well, by Crystal's standards — and joked that Nolte's thoughts were just unintelligible grunts. At least he got that right, because to be honest, that does look like what goes on in Nolte's mind.

—ARIELLE GRINSHPAN