Oscars’ Miss Congeniality vs mellow James Franco

Amid much trumpeting about the organisers' wish to attract a more youthful TV audience, the Oscars ceremony was given to two younger-than-usual hosts this year - the actors Anne Hathaway and James Franco. So how did the kids do?

The general opinion is that Hathaway worked her butt off, changing her costume eight times during the evening, smiling through bad jokes and good, but that Franco was, how shall we put it, not quite there. Over relaxed. Distracted. A little too ... mellow.

Franco is a Hollywood wunderkind who, until last night at least, could do no wrong. He's a brilliant actor (he was up for best actor in 127 Hours and in a year without Colin Firth might have stood a chance). He's a film-maker, a musician, a soap opera star and he's currently studying for an English PhD at Yale.

But as Hank Stuever of the Washington Post put it this morning, "Turns out hosting Oscars is when the dude decides to take a rest."

Tim Goodman of the Hollywood Reporter trade paper was a lot ruder, saying the 83rd Annual Academy Awards "will likely be remembered as the night James Franco couldn't act like a host".

Goodman went on: "Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout."

The LA Times was puzzled by how distracted Franco looked. TV critic Mary McNamara wrote: "Hathaway appeared much more comfortable, maintaining eye contact with the camera in an aggressively Miss Congeniality manner while Franco often seemed distracted, his gaze occasionally doing that Hollywood over-your-shoulder-wander, which brought up the question: Who on earth was he looking for? Everyone was sitting right in front of him."

Gawker thinks it may have the answer. Quoting these and other reviews that described Franco variously as "heavy-lidded and smirky" and "a tad bewildered", the gossip website asked: "Was he stoned?" Surely not. ·