A truly enjoyable Oscar ceremony needs to be both a carefully planned event and a hotbox of spontaneity. We need to simultaneously see the polish of professional artistry and the messiness of raw emotion. That way, we can experience the enjoyment of watching an excellent film and the delight of remembering that the talented people who make excellent films are just doofuses like the rest of us.

I’d say last night’s Oscar ceremony succeeded on both fronts.

On the polished side, producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic turned in a reasonably tight show that dispensed with a lot of musty traditions. Did anyone  miss the speech from the Academy president? Or the walk-across from the accountants? I didn’t. And I appreciated seeing scenes from the previously-taped ceremony for the lifetime achievement winners. The clips from that laid-back party were much more enjoyable than some stuffy, three-minute speech on Oscar night, and I’ll bet the honorees had more fun getting drunk with their friends than shuffling to a microphone.

Taking the large view, I also appreciated the overall tone that Shankman and Mechanic created. They didn’t take the show too seriously, but they teased it with love instead of bitter sarcasm. That attitude was summed up by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin’s laid-back opening. Like droll comedians from the Dean Martin days, they fired pleasant zingers at the crowd and each other, and you got the impression that they were really enjoying it.

This is a benefit of having Hollywood insiders host the show. A John Stewart or a Chris Rock is professionally defined defined by his outsider attitude, which means he pretty much has to maintain that stance for the Oscars. That invites a cooler-than-thou dismissiveness that makes watching the show less fun. (This essay notes explains why that’s true.)

An Ellen Degeneres, meanwhile, is professionally positioned as everyone’s goofy friend, which perhaps invites too much frivolity to an affair that, ridiculous as it is, also carries an elegant weight. But Martin and Baldwin, because they are part of the club that the Oscars are thrown for, and because they’re famous for their gentlemanly humor, can expertly skirt the line between “laughing at” and “laughing with.”

Shankman and Mechanic extended this light-hearted kindness to John Hughes, who got a lovely tribute for a body of work that might seem too slight for the Academy Awards. Ditto the tribute to horror movies. The spirit of both these sections was, “Hey, movies don’t have to be ‘important’ to be important. Let’s honor this work for entertaining us.”

(Granted, the horror movie tribute tried a little hard to make its underdog case… you can’t open by saying it’s been over thirty years since horror took home an Oscar… and then show clips of The Silence of the Lambs and Misery. But that’s a cavil.)

The Best Actor and Best Actress presentations extended the impression of good pals gathering for a good time. Last year, it was stately and stirring to see great actors step out to honor each of the ten biggest acting nominees. But those actors didn’t have obvious connections to the nominees they praised. Not like this year, when each nominee was addressed by someone he or she had worked with. Those connections made the moments feel even more intimate, personal and generous.

There are plenty of things to nitpick in the ceremony—I’d have liked to hear the nominated songs, for instance—but overall, I give the professional side of the Oscars a big thumbs up.

And then… hoo girl! Were there some down-and-dirty human moments or what?!?! Salon has a great report on the commotion surrounding the award for Best Documentary Short, when producer Elinor Burkett shoved director-producer Roger Ross Williams out of the way. Rude! Sa-kurr-itee!**

Conversely, while I doubt that history will be kind to Sandra Bullock’s win for The Blind Side, her acceptance speech was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Like, can she win an Oscar for that? The tears, the laughs, the good-natured self-deprecation… she charmed my socks off. Also? Gabourey Sidibe’s response to being praised by Oprah Winfrey? With the tears and the obvious joy? Yeah… that’s how I would react, too.

And I loved the diva perfection of Barbra Streisand being tapped to deliver the Best Director Oscar to Kathryn Bigelow. It was kind of like when Grand Old Statesmen Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas presnted the award to Martin Scorcese: You could tell the producers were hoping for the outcome they got. (Or was the fix in? Who cares! It was cool!)

Did you hear Bigelow and Streisand’s conversation before Bigelow started her speech? Bigelow was all like, “This is such a honor, receiving this from you,” and it sounded like Streisand said, “Can I hold [your directing Oscar] for a minute, and see what it feels like?” Which, if that’s what actually happened, then… amazing. That display of gratitude, ambition, ego, desire, and politics is exactly what I want the Oscars to provide.

** Yes, that’s a Bon Qui Qui reference