5 Overrated Best Picture Winners And The Movies That Should Have Won

How often on the night of the Oscars do we find ourselves sighing with disappointment once that fateful envelope is opened and read aloud? While many amazing films have been rightfully awarded with one or more of those golden statues, there have been just as many occasions when mediocre films have been given the spotlight over films that truly have stood the test of time. Here is a list of just some of those films, and what really should have taken home the Oscar that night.

A Beautiful Mind/LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

Now I have nothing at all against Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, the loose biopic of schizophrenic mathematician, John Nash. But when compared to the first entry in one of the most audacious and technically stunning film trilogies in history, then its clear who should have come out on top on Oscar night. Although Return of the King would get its due in 2004, The Fellowship of the Ring is a fantastic fantasy epic in its own right, establishing not only that fantasy films were not a dead genre but that Peter Jackson was a truly masterful director, capable of far more than the body-horror comedies of his early days. In another year, A Beautiful Mind winning Best Picture would be deserving, but in the same year as a film that changed the Hollywood landscape as far as big-budget filmmaking was concerned, then it’s something to be noted.

 

Driving Miss Daisy/Born on the Fourth of July

In the grand pantheon of Best Picture winners, Driving Miss Daisy ranks among the safest of choices. Compared to Glory and Do the Right Thing (also released in 1989 but not nominated), Driving Miss Daisy seems perhaps a little too quaint and well-behaved to make the same kind of socio-political impact as those films. But even comparing it to the films that were nominated for Best Picture in 1990, it still seems a rather lifeless choice.

To me the true Best Picture of 1989 was Born on the Fourth of July. Not only is it among Oliver Stone’s best work as a writer-director, but it also ranks among the best war films in terms of its depiction of life after the conflict, when men are left as brittle shells of their former selves. Tom Cruise, in his first Oscar-nominated role, proves himself as a truly great dramatic actor as Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran who also co-wrote the film.

Dances with Wolves/Goodfellas

This one is a favourite to complain about amongst movie fans. It’s one thing for Kevin Costner’s Civil War film about tolerance for the Native Americans (the film that spawned the lazy “white guilt” trend with films like Pocahontas, The Last Samurai and Avatar) to win Best Picture, but it’s another thing entirely for it to have beaten Martin Scorsese’s mobster masterpiece, Goodfellas. Scorsese has often been overlooked by the Academy, but at least with films like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, they were beaten by films that were also great. As the years pass, Dances with Wolves seems more and more like a product of its time. It’s not a badly made film that’s necessarily offensive to the Native American cause, but compared to Goodfellas, its hardly a game-changer.

Chariots of Fire/Reds or Raiders of the Lost Ark

As a Briton, maybe it’s a little unpatriotic of me to call this next film overrated. However, when compared to not one but two other films that were both equally deserving of the Best Picture Oscar, then Chariots of Fire pales in comparison. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a film that probably wouldn’t even be nominated for Best Picture today, considering the bias Oscar voters have towards action cinema, but the fact it got such recognition then was something that should have been cemented with the top prize. As for Reds, Warren Beatty’s epic romance against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution was a risky endeavour that paid off immensely. At the height of the Cold War, we have a three-hour period drama which sympathetically portrays an American communist and the revolutionary cause being applauded by the mostly conservative American Academy.

Crash/Brokeback Mountain

So far on this list, all of my picks for overrated films haven’t been bad films. I may sound harsh, but that’s only because the films that should have won were far more deserving. With Crash however, this is a bad film. Yes, it’s a racial drama with its heart in the right place, but when we look back on 2004, does anyone remember Crash fondly? Does anyone remember it at all?

If anyone does remember it, it’s probably just because it managed to beat out Munich, Capote and Good Night and Good Luck to Best Picture. But the one film that was shafted the most on that Oscar night was Ang Lee’s incredibly powerful Brokeback Mountain, the other film about an ongoing prejudice. Only this is a prejudice that has arguably taken longer to accept in mainstream society. I won’t go as far as to say that the Academy was homophobic for not choosing Brokeback Mountain as its Best Picture, but by choosing the clearly inferior Crash in an attempt to look progressive, then they proved themselves to be at least cynical.