After all the little golden statuettes were given out and all the tears and exasperated “thank you” addresses over, it’s clear the big winner of the 81st Annual Academy Awards was “Slumdog Millionaire.”

The fact the year’s most celebrated film almost swept all of its categories doesn’t surprise many people — in fact, there weren’t many surprises or upsets at all during the Academy Awards. The program seemed to go off without a hitch (except for a few presenters who fouled-up a few lines) and all the expected winners took home a small golden man.

Overlooking that, let’s talk about the big winner of the night, “Slumdog Millionaire.” Is it a great movie that was well-made? Yes. Does it really need to be over glorified? No.

There were many other films that deserved to be recognized this year at the Academy Awards. I’ll look over the fact that “The Dark Knight” got shafted because everyone knew it got the short stick when the list of nominations came out in January.

Instead, another well-deserving film needs to be pointed out, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” This film deserved more recognition than received at the Oscars. The reason it only won three out of 13 awards was that in the other 10 categories, it was fighting against the most over-appreciated movie of the year, “Slumdog.”

Other well-deserving films that were in the shadow of the slumdog giant were “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk” and “Revolutionary Road.” All three were primarily nominated in the same categories of “Slumdog,” making their brilliance less stunning.

Now the Best Picture winner did deserve some of its awards, but not to the extent where the only two words the presenters on stage seemed to know were “Slumdog” and “Millionaire.”

It is hoped that next year there won’t be one film to rule them all and the Academy will recognize the other films of the year equally.