Lights! Camera! Meaningless awards!

Though watching MTV typically makes me depressed or angry or both, the network's annual movie awards' tongue-in-cheek look at the year in film is a refreshing change from the formal, conservative Oscars. MTV's show isn't held down by studio politics or cumbersome categories like "Best Foreign Documentary Grip," so it can afford to reward the issues audiences care about, like what movies showed chicks making out, and can we get them onstage with as much skimpage as possible? It's a celebration of the real juice in pop culture, and while a lot of these awards take a backseat to the cleavage, at least the show's two relatively short hours are entertaining.

Several golden popcorns went to movies that truly merit recognition, yet haven't seen many accolades: Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) got his well-deserved best new filmmaker award (it's a shame that none of the other new filmmakers out this year were recognizable enough to make this a fully functional category), and South Park raked in a trophy for "Uncle Fucka," the best truly traditional musical song in film in years.

Still, the lack of quality movies out there for MTV's demographic makes many of these categories trivial. 10 Things I Hate About You should never, ever be mentioned in tandem with an award (Julia Stiles for Breakthrough Female), unless it's for making Shakespeare unwatchable. There's also no reason to reward Adam Sandler for the plague that was Big Daddy.

Worst of all-not that I mind watching Sara Michelle Gellar walk up and down a stage a lot-is Cruel Intentions, an entertaining diversion at best that reared its trite, inconsequential head in a whopping five categories, and won two of them.

Of course, the big winner was The Matrix, a film well-fitted for the MTV demographic-truly innovative, kick-ass moviemaking (contrasting sharply with that almighty "should-have-been"-watch how uncomfortable George Lucas looks among what should be his target demographic and you'll understand why Episode I sucked).

And then there was the moment when Janet Jackson presented the award for Breast... errr, I mean Best Male Performance to Keanu Reeves. After all, there couldn't be a more appropriate slogan for MTV-watchers than "Woah."