Winning the Oscar for Best Picture is supposed to be a stamp of cinematic greatness. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been handing out the award since 1929, and over the decades, it has crowned some genuine masterpieces. Think Casablanca, Schindler’s List, The Godfather. Films that critics and audiences have celebrated in equal measure for generations.
Still, the Academy doesn’t always get it right. Critics have not always agreed with the Academy’s picks, and several Best Picture winners received surprisingly mixed reviews when they were released. Some of those films have aged badly, others were controversial from the moment the envelope was opened, and a few remain genuinely baffling choices even today. These are the five that critics have judged most harshly.
1. The Broadway Melody (1929) – The First Sound Musical Winner That Nobody Loves Anymore
In 1929, “The Broadway Melody” won what is now known as the Best Picture Oscar, and it is the lowest-rated Best Picture winner on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of only 42%. That places it firmly in “Rotten” territory on the review aggregator, a distinction shared by only a tiny handful of the nearly 100 films to ever win the award.
The film’s critics consensus describes it as “interesting as an example of an early Hollywood musical, but otherwise, it’s essentially bereft of appeal for modern audiences.” Just one year after the silent film Wings won the award, the American film industry was already so caught up in talkie fever that it even went ahead and gave Best Picture to a dreadful musical, strictly because it acted as a showreel for the new technology. The historical footnote is real; the viewing experience, according to critics, very much isn’t.
2. Cimarron (1931) – A Western Epic That Aged Terribly
The Broadway Melody, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Cimarron remain the only Best Picture winners to sit in “Rotten” territory on Rotten Tomatoes. Cimarron holds a 50% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 25% audience rating in 2024, a mediocre 5.8 IMDb rating tied with Cavalcade for the lowest for a Best Picture winner.
Eight decades later, Cimarron is frequently cited on lists of the most undeserving Academy Award winners and is rightfully impugned for racist overtones and scattershot storytelling. Story-wise, Yancey abandoning his wife and child does not sit well with modern-day viewers, nor does the main character’s intolerant hatred and prejudicial views of indigenous Americans. The racial stereotypes are ignorant and offensive, and do not align with how far America has come in the past 90-plus years. It’s a film that was celebrated in its day and condemned by ours.
3. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – Cecil B. DeMille’s Bloated Circus Film
1952’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” wasn’t just nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards; it took home the whole enchilada, winning in a field that included “The Quiet Man,” “Moulin Rouge,” “Ivanhoe,” and “High Noon.” That last competitor matters. High Noon is now considered one of the finest Westerns ever made. The Greatest Show on Earth is not considered much of anything.
In 1952, High Noon came out and was a Best Picture nominee, yet Oscar voters went for The Greatest Show on Earth for whatever reason. The Quiet Man would also have been a more deserving winner, and perhaps the best film of that year, Singin’ in the Rain, wasn’t even nominated. Critics have long pointed to this moment as one of the clearest examples of the Academy rewarding spectacle over substance, a circus movie defeating some of cinema’s most enduring work.
4. Crash (2005) – The Most Controversial Modern Winner
Practically shorthand for an undeserving Best Picture winner, “Crash” is one of the rare Oscar winners to actually deserve every bit of scorn it gets from film nerds. A clumsy afterschool special stretched out into an agonizing sprawl, Paul Haggis’ hyperlink story about racial tensions between Los Angeles residents populates its world with wafer-thin archetypes rather than flesh-and-blood human beings.
To put it as clearly as possible, “Crash” won Best Picture because a large contingent of the Academy refused to give Best Picture to “Brokeback Mountain,” a gay romance movie, in 2006. Not even Paul Haggis himself thinks “Crash” was the best film of 2005. Its exploration of racism, the theme that would supposedly unify all the interlocking storylines, is catastrophically shallow and regressive, substituting sensationalistic violence for cogency, and ultimately making no real point. The critical verdict has only hardened with time.
5. Green Book (2018) – A Feel-Good Drama That Left Critics Cold
Green Book is the worst Best Picture winner since 2004’s Crash according to film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes lists Green Book with a cumulative score of 79%, and no winner of Best Picture at the Oscars had a score so low since the 74% that Crash received. The win sparked immediate backlash, with many in the film community openly stunned when the result was announced.
Green Book faced criticism for deploying white savior and “magical Negro” archetypes that were egregiously out of style in 2018. Similar to fellow controversial Best Picture winner Crash, Green Book upset many critics by treating itself as if it “solved racism.” Relatives of Don Shirley also criticized the film, saying it was not an accurate portrayal of the pianist’s relationship with Tony Lip. The film found huge audiences, winning three Oscars in total, yet the critical unease around its storytelling choices has never really gone away.
