One of the worst films ever to win a Best Picture Oscar.

Rating: 2/10 (2 August 2012)

THE ARTIST is definitely one of the worst films ever to win a Best Picture Oscar. I don't understand why the Academy went so ga-ga over it.
The Oscars lately have definitely gone to the wrong films, and it will be embarrassing in ten or fifteen years from now when people look back and see some of the dreadful choices that were made.
Some examples that come to mind: CRASH; THE HURT LOCKER (better than AVATAR? In a pig's ear); and THE KING'S SPEECH (a good film...but not that good).
And going back a bit further: SILENCE OF THE LAMBS; THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART 2; THE STING; THE FRENCH CONNECTION; BRAVEHEART; Technically the film looks pretty good: the production design, costumes, film editing and music score are excellent, but it didn't do a thing for me and I was very disappointed in it.
And I'm surprised this won the Golden Globe award for Best Film: Comedy or Musical. As a comedy it wasn't remotely funny from start to finish, and the snappy tap dance routine at the end of the film was good but nothing when compared with SINGIN' IN THE RAIN which it copies so slavishly from.
Jean Dujardin's performance was not Oscar worthy despite a few good moments here and there and his co-star, Bérénice Bejo was extremely irritating as Peppy Miller. Ugh! But Dujardin looks like an early 1930's star like Ronald Colman or Douglas Fairbanks. At least ther dog was funny! He gave the only Oscar-worthy performance in the film.
But why was the film silent? Surely if we had a comparison with George's films being campy and silent and Peppy's being a quantum leap in entertainment replete with sound, we would have seen how deluded George was.
The film is set in 1929. Why? By that time, most films would have been all talking. Remember Al Jolson's THE JAZZ SINGER, made in 1927, was a silent film that had a few talking sequences thrown in to make it the first "talkie". By the end of 1928 all the studios had converted to sound, and by 1929...well...there wouldn't have been any silent films at all.
When George goes to see one of Peppy's talking films, why can't we hear her speak? I don't get it. I know that George Valetin does not embrace this new talking picture fad as just that: a fad that sound will not last. His "nightmare" is truly that: he can hear sounds but cannot make any of his own. When he laughs at his co-star acting out a scene from Shakespeare it would have been a perfect comedy moment: her voice could have been terrible like Jean Hagen's character Lina Lamont in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, and we could have laughed at her with him.
Mel Brooks' 1976 film SILENT MOVIE was at least genuinely funny, colorful and witty. As Mel Brooks said in an interview about the film: "We didn't need sound for that one because "the visual jokes were laid thick and fast with no let up."
THE ARTIST was a brave step for any director to make but I was still really annoyed by it all.