Oscar the Grouch

MIT'S OSCAR time again.

No, you didn't oversleep. The actual Academy Awards won't be presented until April. You have a full five months to prepare for the cavalcade of fluff pieces, infotainment specials, and the interminable Oscar ceremony itself.

No, it's only autumn, and with the perennial spate of "serious" autumnal films comes the customary barrage of gushing reviews and banner-size ad copy. "Oscar quality." "A shoo-in for Best Picture." "Academy Award material." And Rex Reed can't be blamed for all of these, though he has managed to skriek more than his fair share of superlatives.

But is an Academy Award really a superlative anymore? What do all the big Oscar movies seem to have in common? Big budgets. Big names. Big, long boring stretches between the title and the credits. And one more thing: Big Issues.

When it comes to serious, relevant films, the critics and the members of the Academy let their spines go limp. The kudodispensers are easily bullied by Big Issues. Witness "Cry Freedom." It's big. Majestic. Socially relevant. Politically correct. And impossibly boring. If yawns were applause, "Cry Freedom" would be getting standing ovations in every theater in America.

Judith Crist disagrees: "[Cry Freedom] ...is as powerful in its political truths as it is compassionate in its consideration of friendship." And the anonymous, eponymous Mr. "Gannet Newspapers" calls it, in no small typeface, "The film of the year, of the decade, even of this generation." What's going on here?

No one would deny that Stephen Biko's story is an important one. No one would deny that apartheid's opponents need all the support they can get. No one would deny that the bottom line, so far as Universal Pictures is concerned, is making a few million bucks. The critics forget that panning a movie about Biko is not equivalent to supporting apartheid. It's just an acknowledgement that another wealthy company has made another lousy movie about something genuinely important.

MAYBE IT'S the change of seasons. Autumn is a time to sober up, to come back from the beach, to atone for actually chuckling at every summer's irrelevant, entertaining comedies. Oscar season--all seven months of it--are the perfect time for critics and studios to work off the guilt they've accrued over the summer.

But personifying and psychoanalyzing the film industry is misleading. The studios don't lie awake at night feeling bad about crass, blockbuster teen comedies, and they don't make major decisions based on collective guilt or animus. Studios are corporations and corporations collect money. And in Hollywood there's only one possession prestigious enough to risk money. on: an Academy Award. But the Oscar statue is far more than a recognition of achievement. It's also the most effective publicity device a studio can hope for.

Of course, some of the Big, Serious Oscar-winners won fair and square. "The Killing Fields" and "Platoon" did justice to their subject matter. They were also exciting and entertaining. Every year, those of us in living room seats will root for other exciting, entertaining movies. And every year, we'll be disappointed. It just doesn't seem fair that the Best Picture Award so frequently goes not to the best movie, but to the best movie with a "relevant" topic.

Maybe that's the solution: a new category. The Best Picture Award will go to the movie that everyone loved and talked about and told their friends to go see. And the Best Movie On A Relevant Topic Award will be presented to ...the kind of movie that always wins the Oscar these days.

But the Academy would never do this. Hollywood knows we'll see the good Oscar-less movies anyway. And when we've seen all of them, we'll go see the serious ones. Why? Because, "Well, it did win an Academy Award..."