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CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Movies Survived 2020. The Oscars
Diversified. There’s More to Do.
At the pandemic Oscars, anything could happen. Here are the lessons from
the nominations: The good, the bad and what needs fixing.

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By Wesley Morris
 April 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
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There was a moment last summer, right around the time that “Palm Springs”
arrived on Hulu, where if you were thinking about whether the Academy Awards
would happen in 2021, you might have wondered if this rinse-and-repeat
romantic comedy might be the sort of thing that could wind up a best picture
nominee. There are 9,000 eligible Oscar voters, none of whom is me, but “Palm
Springs” had a seriousness of purpose and an undercurrent of rage — two
people meet at a wedding then, thanks to a time-space wormhole, keep meeting
at that same wedding — that I found seductive. And, given the rinse-and-
repeating we’ve been doing all these months: predictive. It was a Metaphor of
Its Moment.

The director Max Barbakow and the screenwriter Andy Siara understood
how to merge a funny leading-man (Andy Samberg) with an uninhibited
character actor (Cristin Milioti) and broad comedy with the existential
dread of science fiction. It was a dumb movie. It was shockingly emotional.
Alas, it was also probably too bright, too absurd and released too early in
the year for any voter’s serious consideration. By March 15, nomination
day, it had indeed gone unconsidered.
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