It always seemed like a peculiar idea. James Franco and Anne Hathaway are both decent actors, but neither is known for their presentational skills. In the days since the pair hosted the Oscars, the accumulation of appalling reviews has set up a stink that may prove familiar to the producers of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.

Virtually all notices point up the quite startling contrast between the two performances: Franco sloped like a petulant delinquent; Hathaway flailed like a four-year-old hopped up on too much tartrazine. When the trade paper Variety, usually quite forgiving to celebrities, criticised the “stiff, awkward banter” between the two, the stars may have expected that worse was to come.

Quite right. The Hollywood Reportermused: "In what could go down as one of the worst Oscar telecasts in history, a bad and risky idea – letting two actors host – played out in spectacularly unwatchable fashion on the biggest of all nights for the film world."

This from the Washington Post: "Franco came off like that lacrosse boy you wish your daughter didn't hang out with so much, sort of heavy-lidded and smirky."

The Daily Telegraphchipped in with: "When Franco appeared dressed as Marilyn Monroe and joked that Charlie Sheen had just texted him, I felt like chewing my own arm off."

There’s plenty more where that came from.

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