Indiewire Ben Travers

Kimmel just didn’t belong at the center of this celebration. It’s not his fault, even if it did feel like the perfect time for him to hand off hosting duties — or at least the monologue — to a woman, dreamer, person of color, or anyone else who truly needed to be heard and seen on Oscar night. … That being said, Kimmel’s monologue worked best when he was sincere.

CNN Brian Lowry

The Oscars are a big, unwieldy beast, which invariably try to serve too many masters. Yet if the intent was ultimately to maintain a celebratory tone without ignoring either the outside world or the elephant in the room throughout this year’s awards, host Jimmy Kimmel and the show itself largely succeeded.

The Washington Post Hank Stuever

In his second year, Kimmel has shown that the telecast needn’t be anything but sharp and sure, with a funny host whose bits are manageable, shareable and — best of all — forgotten. We’re not making showbiz history here; we’re just trying to get through another Oscar night.

Variety Maureen Ryan

All things considered, the show had a more or less low-key vibe. Normally it takes about two hours for the numbing effect to set in, but despite host Jimmy Kimmel’s best efforts, Sunday’s telecast started to feel a bit languid and low-energy far earlier.

Yahoo! Ken Tucker

A month ago, I said that the best thing Kimmel could have done was announce he was stepping aside to let a woman host this year’s Oscars. He chose not to do that, and ended up much like the statue of the Oscar he made fun of for having no reproductive organ: It was a eunuch’s performance.

San Francisco Chronicle David Wiegand

Even the hope that the noise of clapping might keep the audience at home and in the theater awake, there was little of that for anything except the entrance of actors of advance age.

Deadline Greg Evans

Did the nearly four-hour running time contain any moments for the Oscar ages? Probably not.

Time Daniel D’Addario

The fundamentals of the ceremony, despite dashes of energy that felt risky and daring, had changed little even as the industry the ceremony honored had begun to change a lot. Jimmy Kimmel—who’d seemed outmatched last year by an envelope mix-up before the evening’s most anticipated award—had months to prepare for a show in the wake of the culture-shaking Harvey Weinstein revelations. And he seemed to have spent those months brainstorming how not to address anything at all.

Vanity Fair Richard Lawson

As a host, Kimmel struck a careful, appropriately measured tone … All told, Sunday’s ceremony did an admirable job of recognizing all the turmoil surrounding it while maintaining the silly, chintzy trappings that so many of us tune into the Oscars for. Both cloying and clever, gassy and game-faced, these Academy Awards did the best they could to address difficult things, short of canceling the whole thing and airing some kind of P.S.A. Awards shows are not the best events to turn to for sharp, complicated discourse.

NPR Linda Holmes

The broadcast itself seemed as tame as the winners’ list.

The Oregonian Kristi Turnquist

Was it respectful? Absolutely. Did it make for kind of a dull, earnest Oscars show. Yeah, kind of.

The Hollywood Reporter Daniel Fienberg

How did Kimmel do overall? With the exception of the theater stunt and two unnecessary toss-off Matt Damon jokes — Kimmel really can’t resist — I thought he was good, probably even better than last year. The monologue wasn’t spectacular, but he was more present throughout the show than some hosts tend to be, perhaps because an astounding amount of filler time was built in.

Vulture David Edelstein

This was the best, most inspiring, and most sheerly likable Academy Awards telecast I’ve ever seen. … It was also — in terms of the actual awards — among the most disappointing.

Gold Derby Tony Ruiz

Thanks to a superb sophomore hosting job by Jimmy Kimmel and a significant nostalgia factor, this year’s Oscar ceremony was a well-paced celebration of the best of Hollywood.