Meryl Streep is a given for another Oscar nod. Or is she?

For the last several weeks, the Oscar race for lead actress felt fairly settled, with five familiar faces, each of them previous winners — Cate Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine”), Sandra Bullock (“Gravity”), Judi Dench (“Philomena”), Emma Thompson (“Saving Mr. Banks”) and Meryl Streep (“August: Osage County”) — as the likely nominees.

Then, on Friday, “August: Osage County” opened in Los Angeles and New York, more than three months after the flamboyant tale of family dysfunction premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, a bumpy debut that led to some subsequent tinkering that softened the movie’s ending.

The movie’s arrival in theaters coincided with the first day that film academy members could begin voting online. And if Oscar voters read the reviews, it might have given them pause for consideration as the notices weren’t the kind normally associated with an awards-season contender.

A.O. Scott, writing in the New York Times, observed that the movie’s plot, which includes adultery, divorce and incest, was “secondary to the spectacle the actors make of themselves.” Scott went on to call the film a “thespian cage match.” “Within a circumscribed space, a bunch of unquestionably talented performers is assembled with no instructions other than to top one another,” he continued. “One twitchy confession must be excelled by another. The same with smoldering, sarcastic speeches, explosions of tears, wistful jags of nostalgia and imperious gazes of disgust.”

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Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan was equally unimpressed, likening “Osage County” to “that branch of reality TV where dysfunctional characters, whether active or passive, make a public display of their wretched lives.”

“If you think your family is difficult, seeing the Westons will set you straight,” Turan writes. “Unless you are actually related to them, however, caring about these people is out of the question.”

The negative reviews may have no effect beyond dampening the movie’s commercial prospects. (Prestige dramas like “August” depend more on reviews than studio tentpole movies do.) The majority of Oscar pundits still believe that Streep, playing the movie’s messed-up matriarch, will receive yet another Oscar nomination for her scenery-chewing work in the film. The thinking: She’s Streep. She has been nominated 17 times. You think the academy is going to ignore a speech-slurring, pill-popping, profanity-filled performance?

Then again, the number of critics calling out the actress has been notable. Yes, feting Streep this time of year seems to be a habit with the academy, even when the work in question falls short of excellence. But with “August: Osage County,” Streep’s legend, which casts a long shadow over everything around it, could work against her.

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“Remember Amy Adams in ‘Julie and Julia’? Anne Hathaway in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’? Anyone at all in ‘The Iron Lady’?” Scott asks in his review. “Of course not. Here Ms. Streep smokes, rants, bites her fingers, slurs her speech and spews obscenities with the gusto of a tornado laying waste to a small town.”

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Actually, it sounds like the very kind of wild and crazy performance that academy members have often rewarded over the years. (“Screamin’” Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman” and Anthony Hopkins’ lip-smacking turn in “The Silence of the Lambs” are two of our favorites.) Actors branch voters love ham around the holidays.

But when it comes to overacting, is there a line dividing “Hoo-ha” and “devastating act of God”? And, if so, did Streep cross that divide in “Osage County”? It’s one of the more interesting facets of this Oscar season, and one that’s now up to academy members to decide. We’ll see what they think on Jan. 16, when the nominations are announced.

Glenn Whipp writes the Gold Standard column for The Envelope.

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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