The 2011 MTV Movie Awards

June 06, 2011|Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

We've turned a real cultural corner when Reese Witherspoon is more vulgar than Jim Carrey. But there we were at the MTV Movie Awards last night, far around the corner. On the one hand, the show was a fiasco. As a broadcast event, it has alway been both a mess and up against the NBA Finals, but it was often conducted with an air of excitement and suspense, even when it was prerecorded. The Movie Awards rebuffed the Oscar's seriousness. Decorum was frowned upon. A degree of wit was not.

Last night was an afterparty at the badly art-directed house of a friend whose parents are out of town. People's pleasure in attending seemed to depend largely on how drunk, high, or not obligated to stay they were. Justin Timblerlake palmed the breasts of Mila Kunis, who, in turn, grabbed Timberlake's crotch. In the slick animated intro to one award (best female performance, I think), a black swan is shown fellating a white one. " Twilight: Eclipse" won everything it could, meaning the audience for the show is girls up late on a school night. The ads were for "Super 8," a third "Transformers" movie, and the latest installment of "Twilight," which looks like something that might actually star Katherine Heigl. And that was during the live show.

True commercial breaks featured Frappuccinos, Clearasil, Google courtesy of Lady Gaga, and the comically suggestive "Teen Wolf," MTV's attempt to horn in on all that is Twilit. Stars couldn't read the teleprompter. They couldn't banter. They could barely host. (The live comedy of last night's emcee, Jason Sudeikis, seems predicated on the possibility that he might be angling to slip something in your drink.)

And yet, on the other hand, the show was dismayingly perfect. The Movie Awards were presented and conducted in exactly the spirit that many movies in America are made and exhibited: What the expletive ever. The night's nadir -- a kind of lifetime achievement award to Reese Witherspoon -- doubled as its apex. After Robert Pattinson, Patrick Dempsey, and Chelsea Handler embarrassed themselves with vulgarities (well, Handler hung back for the most part) on their way toward a highlight reel, Witherspoon took the stage. I expected her to cringe -- if not from the trauma of the show then from the fact that Pattinson was on hand as a living reminder that " Water for Elephants" was not a dream.