Highlights From The 2008 MTV Movie Awards

Starting with the positives, tonight’s live airing of the MTV Movie Awards was blissfully short. Unlike some other award shows that run on for three hours or more, MTV must recognize the limited attention span of their audience because tonight’s broadcast didn’t run past the two hour mark. On the downside (kind of), the award show served to be more about celebrities using almost every available second of airtime to promote their upcoming projects than it did about previous films and performances.

Though in some cases, that wasn’t such a bad thing. For example, the bit featuring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr and Jack Black was pretty hilarious. In the video, the three did their best to impress Ben Stiller’s “nephew,” who did a fairly great impersonation of every bored, desensitized, youtube-addicted teen in America. The bit ended with Jack Black’s head exploding.

Most people probably agree that the MTV Movie Awards are less about the awards and more about the presenters, musical guests and other nonsensical filler material. But if you are actually interested in the winners, click here. And now onto the highlights:

Chris Brown and Mike Myers engaged in an intense dance-off following the opening monologue. Brown’s dancing was so great that I almost forgot to notice his strange outfit, which included a colorful jacket and some seriously red shoes. Myers held his own during the dance-off and even broke out some old school moves including some badass belly rolls.

Coldplay rocked out on stage as a ridiculous amount of confetti rained down on them and the audience. After tonight, I’ve determined that there really is such a thing as too much confetti.

Seth Rogen and James Franco were on stage plugging Pineapple Express when the conversation somehow got onto them smoking weed. Rogen held up a huge bag of what appeared to be marijuana. After that, the shot cut to a zoomed out view of the stage and we could barely even see Rogen or Franco as they continued to talk about smoking the weed and then proceeded to light a joint (or what was supposed to be a joint) and smoke it on stage. Shots of the audience looking surprised, confused and/or amused led me to believe they were just as unsure if what they were seeing was the real deal or not as we were.

Among the more memorable speeches was Will Smith’s acceptance for Best Male Performance. Before thanking the fans for watching I Am Legend, Smith said, “I haven’t always made great movies but I’ve been trying real hard.” You can’t get more honest than that. I would’ve included a quote from either of Johnny Depp’s acceptance speeches but I couldn’t hear him over the screaming fans.

Adam Sandler (aka “The Sandman”) took home the Generation Award and we were not only treated to a great montage of Sandler’s work but also a musical number by The Sandman (that’ll probably be the last time I use that nickname to refer to Sandler) himself. Sandler sang his own version of “Nobody Does It Better” in celebration of his own awesomeness while surrounded by dancers, including Rob Schneider in a gold unitard and Kevin James.

Those of us who recall Sandler’s work on Saturday Night Live were likely to be just as entertained by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey reuniting on stage for a Waynes World skit. While it was great to see the duo back together, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little icked out by their top ten list of porn movie titles based on recent films. Examples from the list included “Gush Hour 3,” “National Pleasure 2: Book of Secretions,” and “Scat-atouille.”

Over all if you could get past all of the blatant advertising for upcoming movie releases, this year’s MTV Movie Awards served its purpose and was relatively entertaining. I definitely could’ve done without the Pussycat Dolls performance but I’ve already started to forget about that. In the end, the reason I like the MTV Movie Awards because they recognize all the great sex comedies, action films and popcorn flicks that often go completely ignored by the Oscars and Golden Globes.