David Kronke: Kids Choice Awards

There are no rules tonight!? roared the warm-up guy minutes before
Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards began Saturday at UCLA’s Pauley Pavillion.

He told the kids in the crowd that if their parents didn’t join them
in screaming and carrying on, You have my permission to yell at
them.?


The 90-minute extravaganza was a classic of dizzyingly, wearyingly
manufactured hyperactive energy. Virtually everyone who took the
stage implored the audience to shriek (and shriek they did, at
everything but the jokes, which almost uniformly went over like lead
balloons); acrobats, apropos of nothing, twirled and tumbled
throughout the event. Tonight’s your night to rage against the
machine,? host Jack Black told the crowd, but the whole event WAS the
machine: Practically every celebrity who took the stage had an
upcoming project they were there to promote; Nickelodeon programs
swept the TV categories; winners seemed chosen on the basis of, well,
who showed up to promote themselves. In short, the biggest
advertisement came between the commercial breaks.

While there was plenty of time for screaming, sliming and burping
contests, there wasn’t time for the awards themselves no fewer than
five of the 15 awards weren’t given out during the broadcast,
including “major” awards like Favorite Movie, Favorite Cartoon and
Favorite Female Singer. But when Are We There Yet?? and Herbie:
Fully Loaded? are vying for the title of Favorite Movie, perhaps
that’s just as well.

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