Author: Brian Truitt / Source: USA TODAY
2017 wasn’t the first time the Academy gave the Oscar to the wrong movie. The films we hail as classics aren’t always the ones that take home the night’s top prize. USA TODAY
Every year around this time, we debate Oscar best pictures, from what’s going to win to rethinking which films should have won to the greatest movies in Academy Awards history.
This isn’t about the best, though. This is about the worst.
Granted, bad movies usually don’t get a shot at taking the biggest prize on Oscar night, but mediocre projects and the occasional head-scratcher do make their way into best picture from time to time – and some even win. Which means maybe “Bohemian Rhapsody” does have a fighting chance going into the 91st annual Academy Awards on Sunday (ABC, 8 ET/5 PT).
Knowing that the actual best picture unfortunately doesn’t always win, here are the 10 worst winners that the Oscars have awarded, ranked according to comparative terribleness.
Ranked: The 10 greatest Oscar best-picture winners (yes, ‘The Godfather’ is included)
Oscars costume party! Get up close with iconic outfits from ‘Black Panther,’ ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and more
10. ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (2008)
The story of a orphaned young man (a pretty great Dev Patel) who rise from the slums to win the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” – only for his victory to be questioned because of his background – is 99 percent of a very fine film. But at the very end, the movie features a giant song-and-dance routine – a shout-out to traditional Bollywood – that a little-too-seamlessly transitions out of the final scene and yanks you out of a satisfying ending. (Honestly, it’s a weird pet peeve. And now I’ve got “Jai Ho” stuck in my head.)
9. ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (1998)
As a concept, it’s a cool idea: Imagine a romance between Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) and a woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) who auditions, disguised as a man, for one of his plays that helps the Bard write “Romeo and Juliet.” Part romantic comedy and part experimental Shakespearean biopic with references aplenty, it’s a tempest of random stuff never settling into cohesion but does remind you that old William was kind of a hip cat.
8. ‘Out of Africa’ (1985)
Hoo boy, this sprawling epic romance is great to look at, and there’s an embarrassment of acting riches with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford as a married Danish writer and a big-game hunter respectively who fall for each other…
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