Last night was the MTV Movie Awards, the network’s annual film awards show that’s always more about parodies and interactions between celebrity presenters than who wins what. If you missed it, have no fear, reruns will be airing round the clock for the next month or so. But be warned: If you were born after 1990, you’re not only older than most of this year’s winners — there will also be some moments from the broadcast that will make you feel ancient. Click through as we run through some of the most egregious examples.
Jason Sudeikis’s opening monologue
“MTV stands for music television, for those of you who forgot. I’m talking to you, MTV executives.” This joke probably went way over the heads of most of the audience at home, who started watching long after the network had dialed down its music video rotation to next to nothing. A later bit about fans of The King’s Speech — with a cut to the group of really old people cheering and waving their canes in the air — made us feel like we were retirement home ready for thinking that the Oscar-winner film is better than Twilight.
The baby smoothness of Steve Carell’s face
Maybe it’s just a much better haircut and a bit of a tan. Maybe working on The Office is more stressful than we could have ever imagined. But is it just us, or is Steve Carell having a total Dorian Gray moment here? He looks like he could be Emma Stone’s younger brother.
Reese Witherspoon’s MTV Generation Award
Reese Witherspoon — who is only 35, mind you — was presented with MTV’s equivalent of a Lifetime Achievement Award by a rather odd trio: Patrick Dempsey, Chelsea Handler, and Robert Pattinson. The Twilight star went off script to explain to the audience that he had played her son in a scene that was cut from Vanity Fair, and then her lover Water for Elephants, dropping an unbleeped f-bomb in the process. Witherspoon’s response? “By the way, Rob, the punchline to your joke was, I played your mother, then we had a sex scene, so really you’re the best mother fucker in Hollywood.” And then she gave out some advice to “young” Hollywood that, while wise, sounded exactly like something our grandmother would say: “I get it, girls, that it’s cool to be a bad girl. But it is possible to make it in Hollywood without doing a reality show. When I came up in this business, if you made a sex tape, you were embarrassed and you hid it under your bed. And if you took naked pictures of yourself on your cell phone, you hide your face, people! Hide your face!”
Justin Bieber’s win for Best Jaw Dropping Moment
As we said in the intro, we realize that the MTV Movie Awards isn’t in any way a real film awards show. But come on! The fact that Justin Bieber — who was seemingly nominated in this category just for appearing in a movie and being Justin Bieber — manged to beat out not only Natalie Portman peeling off her cuticles in Black Swan, but James Franco hacking off his arm in 127 Hours, is totally ridiculous. And just to be clear, this isn’t a highbrow/lowbrow thing: We would have been totally OK with it if Jackass 3D had won for that flying Porta-Potty stunt.
The median age of the night’s winners
Not only did it seem like no one over the age of 30 was even nominated for an award, thanks to the fact that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse swept every category it was in (forcing us to sit through five awkwardly mumbled acceptance speeches), the average age of the evening’s winners (excluding Witherspoon) was around 19.5 by our calculations. Granted, this number is a little skewed by the fact that Grown Ups actress Alexys Nycole Sanchez, who’s only 6, took home the award for Best Line From A Movie Winner (“I want to get chocolate wasted!”) but still. Speaking of Sanchez, when she got up to accept her award, we felt horrified by all of the lame sex jokes that she’d been sitting through for the past hour, like that horrible “127 Inches” bit with the boulder and the laser boners thing. Hopefully one of her parents was there to cover her eyes/provide some earmuffs.
Gary Busey presenting Best Movie Winner
We found it a little jarring when an audience sweep earlier in the evening revealed that Gary Busey was in attendance, but figured that maybe the kids just can’t get enough of Celebrity Apprentice. But when he came out on stage in a hamster ball at the end of the show to present the award for Best Movie Winner, there was something very sad old man in the bubble about it. Especially when he starting doling out high-fives to the cast of Twilight through the plastic. It was like MTV execs were afraid that he might infect the kids with his oldness.
All images via MTV.com.