Most Undeserving Best Picture Oscar Winners

Movies that did not deserve to win the Best Picture Academy Award. It's never easy picking a Best Picture winner but some years you have to wonder why some movies win over movies that are much more deserving.
The Top Ten
1 Shakespeare in Love

Of the Best Picture winners I've personally seen, this one was the least deserving. It looked pretty enough with nice costumes and whatnot. Decent art direction, whatever. The movie looked fine. I'm sure it was acted fine as well, but I don't remember. And that's just it - I don't remember this movie. It was entirely forgettable.

It was just a sappy, silly period romance film. It was a trifle. Nothing about it struck me as special, profound, or worthy of the title of "Best Picture of the Year." It's frequently listed as one of the least deserving films to ever win the award, so I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way. Saving Private Ryan may have been an imperfect film, but it was a far greater cinematic achievement than this.

2 Slumdog Millionaire

I wonder how many of the voters who made this film the number one choice are just angry because The Dark Knight didn't win instead. And truth be told, it probably should have. But it wasn't even nominated (the main reason why the Best Picture category was expanded to include more films the following year), and of the films that DID get the nod, I feel that Slumdog was the best.

Contrived and manipulative? Sure. But extremely well-made? Unquestionably. This is far from the worst Best Picture winner to come down the pike.

3 The Hurt Locker

This wasn't the most intriguing film for me, and I think the Oscar was a bit overestimated. However, it did present a lot of good war themes and had a lot of great actors and acting. It's still worth watching.

This movie literally has no story. It has only random war scenes with no continuity or plot. Worst movie of all time.

Inglourious Basterds should have won.

4 Chicago

The Oscars love movie musicals and all that "Old Hollywood" glitz and glamour nonsense. In that category, Moulin Rouge (one year prior) was a better film. Of the other Best Picture choices of 2002, Gangs of New York was the better choice.

Gangs of New York should have won, but apparently, the Academy loves musicals better than movies that are really good.

Gangs of New York or The Pianist should have won!

5 Crash

This movie proves that the Oscars are all about politics. It deals with racial issues, so the politically correct thing to do was give this movie an Oscar. But the movie itself was very lame, and there were too many clichés used. As for the acting, nobody stood out in this picture.

All these actors and actresses (some are overrated) were certainly not giving their best performances, despite what the press told us. This is the kind of movie you only watch one time and then forget about because there's no scene in it that will stick in your mind afterward. It's so lame, in fact, that this movie will not give you something to think about.

6 How Green Was My Valley

If Citizen Kane is supposed to be the greatest movie of all time, then how in the world did it lose to this forgettable movie?

7 Dances with Wolves

An excellent film, the kind of sweeping epic that the Academy loves to recognize. It's a passionate film, a love letter to the old frontier and the noble people who all but disappeared along with it. The only reason people tend to crap on it is because "Goodfellas be the best thing ever, yo."

To each their own, we're all entitled to our own opinions. Mine is that, good though it may be, Goodfellas wasn't even Scorsese's best movie, let alone the best film of 1990.

Goodfellas should have won the award. Great storyline, great acting (Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro). Truly, it was a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese.

8 Annie Hall

Woody Allen beat Star Wars. Do I really need to say anything else?

Stupid jokes, bad acting. Do I need to say more?

9 American Beauty

1999 was a highly competitive year. Three of the other Best Picture nominees were, in my opinion, great films, and for anyone who wanted to vote for a film that wasn't, there was The Cider House Rules too. American Beauty was the most artsy-fartsy and supposedly "deep" of the lot, so it's no surprise that it won. But I'm not necessarily convinced that it didn't deserve to.

It had an interesting script, great dialogue, and strong performances all around.

10 The Artist

Not a bad movie, just nowhere near as good as the likes of Hugo, Midnight in Paris, or The Tree of Life.

Did anyone actually see this movie? It even surprises me that this movie was nominated at all.

The Contenders
11 Ordinary People
12 Titanic

A greedy cash-in on a tragic story about people who didn't even exist. James Cameron, you can do better than this! But still a better love story than Twilight and the 50 Shades trilogy.

13 A Beautiful Mind

I liked A Beautiful Mind. It was a good movie. It was also a relatively safe, soft, false crowd-pleaser of a movie. I'm of the opinion that The Fellowship of the Ring was an astonishing cinematic and pop culture achievement the likes of which the film industry has rarely seen, and also the (slightly) superior of the three Rings films. It should have won this year.

A Beautiful Mind is a SUPERB, Oscar-winning movie. Hands down, Russell Crowe should've won the Oscar for Best Actor that year.

14 The King's Speech

There are a lot of super dumb Best Picture wins, but this has to take the cake. I am willing to say that this was the WORST Best Picture nominee in its year. As proof, just look at the other ones:

127 Hours - Amazing movie, James Franco is stunning.

Black Swan - Story, direction, and acting are lightyears ahead of this.

The Fighter - Not a lot better, but the acting is top-notch.

Inception - Possibly one of the most original movies ever. Astounding in visuals, acting, and storyline.

And so on. I can do this for every movie nominated. The King's Speech sucks.

15 Out of Africa

Commonly regarded as one of the most boring, empty films to ever win an Academy Award. I haven't seen it myself. I just know that its reputation has certainly not grown with time.

Boring, like almost every Meryl Streep movie.

16 The Apartment
17 Oliver!
18 The Shape of Water
19 Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

Other movies such as Whiplash, The Imitation Game, and The Theory of Everything were more deserving of the win.

But at least it didn't go to American Sniper.

In my opinion, Boyhood was better. And why didn't they nominate Interstellar?

This was a year of bad movies, but this was the worst. Pretentious crap.

20 Chariots of Fire
21 Moonlight

So which film wins the Oscars for 2016?

Not the brilliant musical with outstanding numbers, beautiful acting, and a great story that also deals with the dark side of the entertainment industry.

Not the heart-wrenching true story of Desmond Doss, who was persecuted for his faith in the army yet ended up saving dozens of lives without firing a single gun.

It's the mediocre SJW film about a little boy who is bullied into thinking he's gay because he's more intelligent and less aggressive than other boys and grows up to become a drug dealer with no friends.

22 Argo

Lost to Lincoln, Les Miserable, Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, and Django Unchained. Enough said.

23 The Greatest Show on Earth
24 Green Book
25 The Broadway Melody
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