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.

Five Most Overrated Best Picture Winners

The Academy has created plenty of controversy in the past selecting such winners as Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Crash and Forrest Gump among others. This list represents my opinion of the five most overrated Best Picture winners. I have excluded those pictures that have lost luster over time (Cimarron,Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, but rather films that maintained a healthy following.

5. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

The universal acclaim for this movie still baffles me as the movie is a rather simple telling of a modern day Dickensian storyline. The movie certainly has some thrilling scenes, but beyond that the storyline is very conventional. A movie without memorable characters and forced antagonism along with a traditional frantic Hollywood ending that doesn't belong or fit with the rest of the movie. An entertaining movie, but worthy of high praise it is not.

4. The Sting (1973)

A rather strange anomaly in the Best Picture canon, a movie of pure entertainment winning the big prize. Considering some of the other challenging movies of the 70's to win, The Sting simply feels out of place. The movie contains a great cast and is a rather enjoyable, but neither is it memorable. Considering some of the other challenging and more memorable films of 1973, The Sting's victory seem all the stranger.

3. Chicago (2002)

More of Hollywood's apology for not rewarding Moulin Rouge the year before, Chicago provides a few entertaining musical numbers, without a story to care about. Musical sequences have nothing to do with the story and rarely flesh out the characters. By the way the characters are selfish and nasty, hardly traits to identify with. Granted I'm no fan of musicals, but the Academy could've done much better than this bland release, considering The Two Towers, About Schmidt, The Pianist, Far From Heaven and Road to Perdition were also released that year.
2.My Fair Lady (1964)

Just another musical I just don't get. Beloved for its star Audrey Hepburn, My Fair Lady is an overlong production of an overdone story.

1. Shakepeare in Love (1998)

I've started watching this three times, I fell asleep three times, enough said.