Worst Best Picture Winners

The last two days I took a look at overrated and some under-appreciated Best Pictures. Today I look at some of the worst movies to win the big prize. Many of the titles considered were from the early days of the prize, which have not aged particularly well. I've narrowed the list to five, but could've included several more. Once such example was Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement which is simply a dated movie about anti-Semitism in America. A good movie for its time no doubt, but the emotional impact has been mooted over the last several decades. Other movies just prove to be rather ordinary (In the Heat of the Night, Chariots of Fire, Kramer vs. Kramer, A Beautiful Mind). Look tomorrow for a list of five of my favorite Oscar winners.

5. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Cecil B. DeMille's lone Oscar winner is a bloated epic, that was a box office smash of 1952. A prime example of a movie owing its success to large cast of stars, The Greatest Show on Earth lacked a story then and nothing memorable for modern audiences to care about.

4. Out of Africa (1985)

Out of Africa has beautiful cinematography and little else going for it. One of Meryl Streep's least impressive performances and a less than compelling romance make for one of the Academy's larger bores. There is nothing inherently terrible about this movie, but neither does is it compelling. To care about someone's affair you must first care about the character, and the movie doesn't portray that effectively. However, the movie had little competition and easily won the Oscar.


3. Cimarron (1931)

An early Western that takes place over several decades, but fails to engage the audience in any meaningful way. Cimarron is a rather difficult movie to sit through and to keep your attention on. The story lacks any connective tissue to scenes and time frames, and its racial stereotypes have shown how we have progressed.

2. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

If you read my column Wednesday you know why

1. Gigi (1958)
I hated this movie, from its arranged marriage of a 14 year old to the disturbing opening number Thank Heaven For Little Girls. Gigi continually asserts that young girls exist only to be shaped by other women to marry men and little else, yet argues that our title character somehow falls in love with the douchebag Gaston. Containing not one catchy song or a character to care about along with its horrible story and disgusting themes Gigi easily takes the crown as my least favorite Best Picture.