The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.
Today’s prompt: What is the least deserving film ever to have won the Best Picture Oscar?
This one I didn’t really have to think about at all. There are a few contenders for this prize as you look throughout Oscar history, from crotchety early sound musical The Broadway Melody to overblown spectacle The Greatest Show on Earth, but the most appalling Best Picture winner to my mind is 2005’s Crash, which is the epitome of the manipulative, unsubtle, and superficial message picture. I don’t like message pictures in any case, but most of them have the decency to have characters to care about or a plotline with some interest on its own or some subtlety or nuance to its point, but not Crash. I hated watching it, and I’ve hated every second I’ve spent thinking or talking about it. Including the thirty seconds it took me to write this.
And no, I’m not looking for a clip, either.