I can’t say the Cecil B. DeMille Award generates much enthusiasm out of me, but today’s announcement from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) that Robert De Niro will be given the award during the 2011 Golden Globe Awards on January 16 makes me think it’s the wrong time for such an honor. I know this isn’t a lifetime achievement award, but the idea he’ll be holding up a piece of hardware at the same time Little Fockers is still in theaters just seems wrong to me. De Niro is an actor that has turned in some fabulous work throughout his career and the idea he’s being awarded after a rather long string of mediocre films seems a bit out of place.
The HFPA press release announcing the award cites many of these performances such as when he played young Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (a role that won him an Oscar, but not even a nomination for a Golden Globe), his portrayal of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Jimmy Doyle in New York, New York, a Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter and Jack Walsh in Midnight Run. However, the release also includes his turn in Jay Roach’s “comedy” Meet the Parents, which seems like a backhanded compliment if there ever was one.
At the Toronto International Film Festival I saw De Niro’s most recent turn in Overture’s Stone and didn’t even bother with a review I was so unmoved. Sure, he was fine in Machete, he wasn’t too bad in Stardust, but outside of being one of the few that enjoyed The Good Shepherd I have to go as far back as Ronin and Jackie Brown to find De Niro performances I actually enjoyed.
The last eleven recipients of the award were Martin Scorsese (2010), Steven Spielberg (2009), Warren Beatty (2007), Anthony Hopkins (2006), Robin Williams (2005), Michael Douglas (2004), Gene Hackman (2003), Harrison Ford (2002), Al Pacino (2001) and Barbra Streisand (2000). Of the names on that list, Beatty and Hackman are really the only two that seem to have hung it up, even Streisand feels the need to come back and star alongside De Niro in the Focker franchise.
I’m probably making too big of a deal out of nothing major, but it would have been nice to see him receive this award after returning to acting form, or at the very least if his Tribeca Productions was putting out anything decent. What’s next after Little Fockers for Bobby D? Why New Year’s Eve of course, the unofficial sequel to this year’s awful Valentine’s Day.
At the very least he was The Dark Fields and The Killer Elite coming up as well as the potential reteaming with Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in The Irishman, a film that should it come to existence may have made the perfect time to award De Niro with a major award.
You tell me, am I making a mountain out of a mole hill or does this seem a bit off to you as well?
