Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore, Wikipedia
Hosted by comedian Amy Schumer, of “Inside Amy Schumer,” the 15th annual MTV Movie Awards took place in the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles and, as per every year, awarded non-prestigious prizes alongside more critical acclaims.
The award ceremony was a celebration of movies that had teens swooning for some of the year’s highest budgeted and most popular films. The biggest winner of the night was the adaptation of John Green’s romance fiction “The Fault in Our Stars” and its lead actress Shailene Woodley. She personally took home hardware for best female performance, while the film itself snagged top honors for movie of the year and a secondary award for best kiss, going to Woodley and costar Ansel Elgort. Woodley was also victorious in the non competitive MTV Trailblazer Award, which recognizes young stars who inspire and maintain a positive image in the public sphere.
Another film that saw success was comedy film “Neighbors,” which starred Seth Rogen and Zac Efron. The outlandish film was given the golden popcorn for best shirtless performance (Efron), best on-screen duo (Efron and Dave Franco) and WTF moment (Rogen and Rose Byrne). These categories are examples of awards that have been emerging into the show and replacing what seems to be an ever-changing lineup of accolades.
A surprise standout of the evening was little-known actor Dylan O’Brien, whose recent film “The Maze Runner” became a box office success. O’Brien was recognized with the breakthrough performance and best hero awards, while he and screen partner Will Poulter captured the best fight category. The final multi-award winning film was the third installment of the “Hunger Games” series, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.” Jennifer Lawrence strangely won best musical moment and costar Elizabeth Banks was noted for best on-screen transformation for her role as Effie Trinket.
On the other side of the spectrum from Woodley’s best female performance, Bradley Cooper won best male performance for his portrayal of veteran Chris Kyle in “American Sniper.” Jennifer Lopez won in the category of “scared as shit performance” for the all-around flop “The Boy Next Door,” while best villain was bizarrely given to Meryl Streep, who was certainly the black sheep at an event primarily populated by 20-somethings.
Specialized categories, including the Comedic Genius award and MTV Generation award, were given to Kevin Hart and Robert Downey Jr., respectively. Hart was the first recipient of the Comedic Genius award that honors comics who have seen great achievement across film and television. The MTV Generation Award was awarded to Downey because of his wealth of unique roles and his excellence in acting.
This year’s show was relatively uneventful in terms of the shock value that viewers have come to expect from MTV. The mixture of non-meaningful and semi-serious awards have begun to lose their luster, resulting in a dull, simplistic showing at this year’s MTV Movie Awards.
brocha@ramapo.edu
