NBC aired the 70th Annual Golden Globes Awards on Sunday night, which hit a six-year high in ratings, and praise abounded for hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as well as Jodie Foster’s acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The following are reviews from TV critics around the Web, compiled by B&C.
“While the Golden Globes suffered the fate of far too many awards shows - having to play off the winners the audience most wants to see because of time constraints - it was nevertheless a funny, rousing and swiftly paced affair. Credit in large part goes to hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, plus Cecil B. DeMille Award recipient Jodie Foster, whose enigmatic acceptance speech was, by turns, funny, personal, touching and odd.”
-Tim Goodman, The Hollywood Reporter
“I will not pretend that it’s an easy thing to successfully host an awards show….But Tina Fey and Amy Poehler damn sure made it look easy. The duo, each of whom has been one of the best things at any awards show they’ve presented at in the past few years, managed to turn in a performance that was hilarious without overshadowing the show, pointed without being mean-spirited and surprising without trying too hard.”
-James Poniewozik, TIME
“The 2013 Golden Globes were that rarest of 21st century beasts: an entertainment awards show that was genuinely entertaining on its own merits, even with a variety of technical glitches along the way.”
-Alan Sepinwall, HitFix
“Poehler and Fey found another way to have fun with the whole shindig. Sure, they made the expected jokes about the industry, but there was a huge difference in how they framed their witty lines about celebrities: The jokes were about hard things the celebrities had gone through, not dumb things they had done. The jokes were sympathetic, not antagonistic.”
-Maureen Ryan, The Huffington Post
“You knew going into it that The Golden Globes were bound to be funny. Nearly every joke told or stunt pulled by hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler was solidly, often exceedingly, funny.”
-Ken Tucker,Entertainment Weekly
“Beyond providing specific hilarity throughout the show, they infused the telecast with a sharp professionalism that made room for a surprise visit by former President Bill Clinton, a show-stoppingly hilarious set by presenters Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell (front-runners for next year’s hosts) and a deeply felt but undeniably strange speech from Jodie Foster.”
–Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times
“Amid all the Golden Globes’s noisy chatter, bungled cues and awkward technical…that have come to define this opening rite of the awards season, Fey and Poehler administered the requisite stage slaps at Hollywood with fairly tame jokes that came at completely affordable expense to James Cameron and James Franco, as well as Meryl Streep.”
–Hank Stuever, The Washington Post
“[H]aving two of its stars handle the hosting chores amounted to extra promotion for NBC, which blatantly used the show for those purposes at every turn — from coy banter between Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon to a gratuitous shot of Comcast-NBC management during Foster’s presentation to having Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie and other members of the Today team emcee the arrivals show. Small wonder both Leno and Fallon earned red-carpet time for no reason other than intramural pom-pom waving.”
–Brian Lowry, Variety
“[T]he night truly belonged to co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler whose good-natured irreverence was a welcome balance after the last three years when British comedian Ricky Gervais turned the show into a roast.”
–Alan Duke, CNN
“There were few real humorous moments after [the opening], except for Will Ferrell’s and Kristen Wiig’s introduction to the best actress in a drama award. The show itself had a disjointed quality in the way it handed out trophies, as if somebody was randomly picking categories out of a hat. It did, however, stick to its three-hour schedule.”
–Rob Lowman, Los Angeles Daily News
“Tina Fey and Amy Poehler opened the show with non-stop laughs and kept them coming all night long with hilarious bits and one-liners about just about every star in the room.”
–Ann Oldenburg, USA Today
