Sometimes the stars align disastrously during an Oscar campaign, most famously when Eddie Murphy’s pursuit of an Oscar for “Dreamgirls” was dragged to Earth by the sheer gravitational pull of a bomb called “Norbit,” released on this very weekend seven years ago.
Seven years later, Eddie Redmayne’s brilliant work as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” is in danger of being eclipsed by his campily unhinged turn as a mad intergalactic real-estate mogul and mass murderer in “Jupiter Ascending.”
Or is it?
As it happens, his film’s opening precisely coincides with the opening of Oscar polls on Friday. Some Oscar strategists believe that as many as two-third of the ballots will be filled out and returned (online, or mailed in) this first weekend, though polls remain open until Feb. 17.
There has been chatter on Twitter for some time about the possibility of Redmayne — who pulled ahead of Michael Keaton in the Best Actor race after winning the Screen Actors Guild award two weeks ago — being “Norbited.” It has only increased after critics and Oscar pundits finally got a look at “Jupiter Ascending,’’ which was postponed from a planned release last July thanks to lethal word of mouth about its trailers.
As my opposite number at the Times of London put it on Tuesday:
The Washington Post put it more bluntly, headlining a story Thursday: “Eddie Redmayne is ridiculous in ‘Jupiter Ascending.’ Can he still win an Oscar?” Stephanie Merry writes that “in a movie riddled with unintentional humor . . . nearly all of the awkward tittering comes at the expense of Redmayne’s portrayal.” Actually, when I saw it people were also laughing quite a bit at Channing Tatum, who wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “Foxcatcher.” But she has a point.
Redmayne is indeed “terrible,” as the Washington Post (and surprisingly few reviewers) put it, but there are some crucial differences between him and Eddie Murphy, who was 30 years into his screen career and had weathered a scandal involving a transsexual prostitute when he was nominated for a straight dramatic performance as a desperate soul singer in “Dreamgirls.”
Murphy is also a very controversial figure who had done some jaw-droppingly bad movies — like “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” a sci-fi comedy that’s actually less funny than “Jupiter Ascending.” Even before the release of “Norbit,” the wealthy comedian may have fatally damaged his candidacy by a Golden Globes acceptance speech in which he arrogantly joked about being “asked to work for free” (i.e., take a salary deferment) on “Dreamgirls.”
Though it made a lot of money, “Norbit” (which had also been postponed from an earlier planned release) was a raunchy comedy practically guaranteed to turn off Oscar voters. Not for the first time, Murphy played several corpulent characters of both genders — and worse, billboards of him in character as a fat, scantily-clad middle-aged woman were omnipresent, as were the trailers.
By contrast, the marketing materials for “Jupiter Ascending” focus on top-billed stars Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, and while the trailers include Redmayne, they don’t give much of a hint just how awful he is.
Unlike Murphy (except at the very beginning of his career), Redmayne benefits from being a critic’s darling going back to “Savage Grace” (2007), in which he and Julianne Moore played an incestuous mother and son. Moore is almost universally anticipated to win this year’s Best Actress Oscar for “Still Alice” — with virtually no one paying attention to the fact that Moore also has a film opening this weekend (the fantasy “Seventh Son’’ that’s gotten even worse reviews than “Jupiter Ascending.”
Redmayne also gave a problematic Golden Globes acceptance speech this year, but he made up for it with a great one at the Screen Actors Guild Awards two weeks ago. And he’ll likely get to audition for the Oscars again at Sunday night’s British Academy Awards. Given all that, I think he’s still in good shape to win the Best Actor Oscar (and put “Jupiter Ascending” behind him).
The other award ceremony to watch for this weekend — even though it is not broadcast at all, unlike the BAFTAs, which are carried on a six-hour time delay on BBC America Sunday night — is the Directors Guild of America, which will hand out its feature film prize early Sunday morning, New York time.
DGA is the oldest of the precursor awards, and by far the most predictive of the Oscars. I’d agree with the prognosticators, most of who are calling this for Richard Linklater of “Boyhood.” Many of them have recently come around to my Jan. 15 prediction that “Boyhood” will lose Best Picture to “Birdman’’ in what would be the Oscars’ third Best Picture/Best Director split in a row.
But if Clint Eastwood pulls off a surprise win at the DGA with his smash hit “American Sniper” despite not having a Best Director Oscar nomination (just like Ben Affleck did with “Argo” two years ago), we may be looking at the biggest Oscar upset since “Crash” won over “Brokeback Mountain.”