The 12 Worst “Best Picture” Winners

The Academy Awards’ “Best Film” is meant to be the highest accolade that can be given to a motion picture, putting it beyond every piece of cinema made that year. Each film to win the prize is meant to be a triumph, defeating countless hordes of other flicks to prove itself full of artistic merit and stunning acting, a great film that will stand the test of time. Why, oh why, then, are so many of them crap? Well, maybe not crap, but victorious over much, much better films? These 12 are some of the worst offenders, movies that somehow took out number one, despite being mediocre, going against much better contenders, or both.

12. An American in Paris

An American in Paris took out the Best Picture award in 1951, with its joyous portrayal of Paris shot almost entirely on a sound-stage that looked like it had once seen a postcard of the city, and figured that was close enough. It was a bright, optimistic film, one of MGM’s most well regarded musicals, and how can you look past Gene Kelly? However, even with all this going for it, it was a shallow spectacle, completely devoid of character depth or interest. There’s just nothing to it, it’s a hollow, shiny toy of a film — expensive to produce, filled with song and dance numbers to beloved music. This was the same year as the incredibly powerful and dramatic Streetcar Named Desire and A Place In The Sun, both of whom had substantially more acting chops and warranted the award.

11. Gigi

Gigi was originally a drama which got given a light coat of paint and was turned into a musical, completely removing any of the social commentary and characterization that was in the original novella and play, following a young lady being groomed for the life of a courtesan. It was saccharine, sentimental, and just too damned long, as the team tried to recapture the magic of My Fair Lady. Somehow, this trite musical managed to grab the best film Oscar, even though the same year saw classics like Orson Welles and Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil, or Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

10. How Green Was My Valley

Yes, it sucks to be a miner. I think that’s a point that has never been argued, across a panoply of different media. In 1941 this morose drama took best picture, and is actually a pretty good movie, but through the spectacles of time, there were two others that were so incredibly better qualified to have won that Valley seems like an oddball choice. First, you have what is arguably the greatest detective noir film ever made: The Maltese Falcon. It became a cultural touchstone, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a movie that better defined the way we viewed detective stories. The other film that by all accounts should have won the Oscar is what is considered by many the greatest film of all time: Citizen Kane. Yeah, Kane only won a single Oscar: best original screenplay — even though the movie completely changed the landscape of cinema for all time.

9. Kramer vs. Kramer

Perhaps it’s just in the light of modern sensibilities that Kramer vs Kramer seems so weak. I’m sure in 1979 a movie about a custody battle which portrayed both divorced parents as less than perfect individuals who wanted to try and raise their son was probably pretty revolutionary, but today it’s pedestrian. A couple who can’t work things out, and say horrible things about each other in court? That won best picture? It was revolutionary because it showed a father as a competent caregiver? Say what? Really, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now should have won in 1979.

8. Cimarron

Cimarron was the winner in 1931, only the second year the award was given out, and shows the fledgling state of the film industry. To modern eyes it’s a woefully inadequate film, that meanders without rhyme or reason along a 40 year story. The writing shows just how unused to talking films script-writers were, and lead actor Richard Dix overacted constantly. Consider it birthing pains for an industry just beginning to realise the potential of a medium, but by any objective measure this sprawling and ill-defined film doesn’t hold up. There’s just not enough there to recommend it. Astonishingly, it cost $1.5 million to film, an incredible amount during the depths of The Depression.

7. Driving Miss Daisy

Everybody loves Driving Miss Daisy. Isn’t it sweet how two old people can look past racial and class divides, in order to found a long lasting friendship? Hell, it’s a movie you can safely watch with your grandmother, and hopefully nudge her to stop being so weirdly racist about “the negroes”. And its got Morgan Freeman, so it has to be good, right? Yet, as is often the case when a feel-good movie wins Best Picture, it lacks any real depth or intrigue. All the characters learn and grow, and we all get past our intolerance and ignorance, and isn’t everything wonderful? We get it, racism is bad, it hardly takes an Academy Award to tell us that. There were a boatload of better movies that year: Cinema Paradiso, Dead Poets Society, My Left Foot and Born on the Fourth of July were all stand out.

6. Around the World in 80 Days

A three hour long educational film about other cultures that’s horribly biased and incredibly tedious. That’s the best way to describe 80 Days, which clocks in at a length that would make Peter Jackson start to yawn. Rather than focus on plot, excitement, or even the wonder that visiting these exotic locales would doubtless instill in even the most stiff-upper-lipped of British souls, we’re just treated to tedious set piece after tedious set piece. Parade after parade. Compared by many to boring travel videos that your friends show you, it’s worse in that you actually paid for this. And I’m sorry, but Shirley MacLaine is not Indian.

5. The Departed

The Departed was good, but not good enough to win best picture. The only reason it took out the award was because The Academy felt bad about not giving Scorsese the statue for anything he really deserved it for, like Taxi Driver, The Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York or The Aviator. Jack Nicholson chews up scenery all over the show, and Mark Wahlberg is an angry thug. It’s hardly Scorsese’s best work, and it doesn’t hold up to the wonderfully twisted machinations of the film it was based on: Infernal Affairs, which was instead set inside the police and triads of Hong Kong.

4. Shakespeare in Love

It’s a rare thing for a comedy to win Best Picture, usually because they just don’t have the chops to go against the heavier dramatic fare. And, to tell the truth, 1998 was a good year for film. Even with that, can you honestly say that Shakespeare in Love was anything more than mildly amusing? It had the less talented Fiennes brother, the always mediocre Gwyneth Paltrow, and the only honestly well acted parts in the entire film were the costars: Geoffrey Rush and Judi Dench particularly. It was a cute film, with some mildly funny parts, which somehow beat out Saving Private Ryan, the Thin Red Line and Life Is Beautiful. I’m not really sure how that came to happen.

3. Crash

Racism is bad, ensemble cast, big names. Instant Oscar, right? It’s like how Cuba Gooding Jr keeps trying to score another nomination by playing oppressed roles. It’s nothing but Hollywood wank, a bunch of blockbuster actors attempting to hang with the drama kids. “Look at us, we’re deep! We promise!” Bloated, preening and self-obsessed, just about any other movie made in 2004 would have been a better choice. Brokeback Mountain? Capote? Good Night, Good Luck? All were miles better than this dreck. Now, if they had given the Oscar to the 1996 Crash directed by Cronenberg, then we’d be on to something.

2. Chicago

It causes me physical pain that Chicago won best film in 2002. It’s nothing but shallow glamor and flash, completely devoid of substance or even decent acting. I get that every decade or so they throw a bone to the musicals, so people don’t feel like the genre is dead (hint: it is), but Chicago? Such a relentlessly standard and unexciting telling of a such an overplayed musical? When it could have gone to Adaptation, Frida, The Pianist, or Gangs of New York? How in the name of all that is holy did this flash in the pan beat out such a legion of truly great flicks?

1. Braveheart

Ugh. Braveheart. Almost three hours of Mel Gibson waving his dick around, just so he can hate on the English. This film had two things going for it: good battles and one good speech. Other than that it was hackneyed tripe from start to finish, filled with xenophobic ranting and universal stupidity the likes I cannot believe won an Oscar. And don’t even get me started on the completely fictional reality it seems to take place in, which seems to take liberties with the facts the way the TSA takes liberties with my genitals. Hell, whole books could be written on just how fundamentally wrong every single part of this movie is about what actually happened — even the key premises are wrong. You know what other movies came out in 1995? Apollo 13, Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, Se7en, and the Usual Suspects. Can you honestly tell me the glorified war porn of Braveheart was better than those?