'LORD,' HAVE MERCY 'RINGS' SWEEP LEAVES LITTLE SUSPENSE FOR TV VIEWERS.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

Well, there was a smidgen of drama in Sunday's 76th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theatre: Was there any award that Kiwi director Peter Jackson's ``The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King'' wasn't going to win?

As it turned out, no - the film took every trophy for which it was nominated, and its 11 wins tied the Oscar record shared by ``Ben-Hur'' and ``Titanic.'' Host Billy Crystal acknowledged the evening's forgone conclusion two hours in by proclaiming, ``It's now official - there is no one left in New Zealand to thank.'' A half-hour later, he added, ``People are moving to New Zealand just to be thanked.''

Producer Denise Robert of Canada's ``The Barbarian Invasions,'' named best foreign language film, accepted by expressing gratitude that ``Lord of the Rings'' wasn't eligible in her category. That's probably only because no one got the bright idea of considering the Middle-earth creatures' guttural grunts a foreign language.

Unfortunately, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rarely believes in spreading the wealth, preferring unwieldy sweeps that negate the quality of every other movie released in a calendar year. Odd that these expert dramatists offer no sense of drama on their biggest night of the year. Was ``LOTR'' the only movie voters bothered to see?

The predictability bled into the rest of the production. For all the hints that host Billy Crystal would shelve his old routines and come up with new comic bits, he stuck with the tried and true: song parodies, the montage of film scenes injecting the comedian in the best picture nominees, and a bit in which he read the minds of the attendees. He even revisited his old Sammy Davis Jr. impression from his days on ``Saturday Night Live.''

Crystal's best laugh came when he was juxtaposed - naked, an image more disturbing than Janet Jackson's recent overexposure - in the famous nude scene between Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in ``Something's Gotta Give.'' His material, however, felt a little familiar, perhaps because all the big pop-culture stories - Jackson, Mel Gibson, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - have been fairly run into the ground by other comics.

The evening's funniest moments came from Blake Edwards, who crashed his motorized wheelchair through a stage wall while accepting his lifetime achievement trophy, and Jack Black and Will Ferrell, who performed the putative lyrics to the song that nudges winners whose acceptance speeches who run too long off stage (the chorus: ``You're boring,'' a fair summation of the show itself).

Stirring as Ferrell and Black were, the best musical performance nonetheless came from the Dadaist cabaret reimagining of ``Belleville Rendezvous,'' a best song nominee from the ``The Triplets of Belleville.'' Eugene Levy did nicely, likewise, in reprising his dazed character from ``A Mighty Wind'' while performing the film's Oscar-nominated ditty, ``A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,'' with co-star Catherine O'Hara. (The best song winner, of course, came from ``LOTR.'')

Like last year, the documentary feature Oscar winner provided the requisite political activist statement of the evening (aside from best actor Sean Penn, who slid his in so deftly that a lot of people may have missed it), again protesting the war in Iraq. The response was significantly different from last year when Michael Moore received scattered catcalls from the audience. (Moore parodied his acceptance speech in Crystal's opening montage, declaring the war with the Orcs ``a fictitious war.'')

Filmmaker Errol Morris, whose ``The Fog of War'' examines the Vietnam War, declared, ``Forty years ago, this country went down a rabbit hole, and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again. And if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas in the film, perhaps I've done some damn good here.''

Crystal's response: ``I can't wait for his tax audit.''

Credit Crystal and producer Joe Roth for keeping their promise to shorten the program from the four-hours-plus bores of recent years - it ran a still-lengthy 3 hours and 45 minutes. The tributes to Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn and Gregory Peck were tasteful and to the point. The most head-scratching aspect of the show was the outtros into commercial breaks titled ``Sounds of Oscar,'' which merely repeated a moment from earlier in the show. The intent seemed to be to provide a behind-the-scenes feel, as in NBA games when we listen in on players debating calls with referees. The actual result, however, was underwhelming.

As were the ever-sprawling pre-ceremony shows, those cholesterol-laden orgies of celebrity genuflection, enlivened only by the appearances of ``Starsky & Hutch'' stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson (who were funnier on the red carpet than they were in the actual ceremony).

However, ABC's red-carpet show offered another little piece of suspense: Just who would interviewer Billy Bush, who behaved like a pub-trolling womanizer while chatting up actresses, go home with?

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1) Oscar host Billy Crystal showed up without his tux - or anything else, for that matter - when spoofing ``Something's Gotta Give'' during the telecast.

(2 -- 3) Performances of the nominated songs from ``The Triplets of Belleville,'' right, and ``A Mighty Wind,'' above, were highlights of the Oscar ceremony.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer