The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been giving out the Best Picture Oscar since 1929. Over the years, the award quickly became the most prestigious honor in the film industry, which it remains to this day. A grand total of 97 movies (and counting) have proved themselves worthy of the most coveted Oscar, and although a few of them tend to be counted among the greatest films ever made, a few others have received much less critical acclaim.
On the popular movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, only three Best Picture recipients hold a “rotten” score of less than 60%. However, a few other winnershold ratings that are particularly low for a movie that AMPAS deemed the best of a given year. Whether it’s because their content hasn’t aged well or because they were never particularly extraordinary to begin with, these are the ten films with the lowest aggregated score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
10’Forrest Gump' (1994)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 75%
Forrest Gumpis the quintessential all-American classic of the ’90s that provedRobert Zemeckisstill had the spark and thatTom Hankswas a star for the ages. It chronicles the history of the United States from the ’50s to the ’70s through the eyes of the titular character, a low-IQ Alabama man who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.
Bolstered by Hanks’s delightfully charming performance,Forrest Gumpis filled with memorable momentsand delectable dialogue. Most critics on Rotten Tomatoes appreciate the dedication to its unforgettable protagonist and his enjoyable cheesy story, but most also note thatthe movie’s sociopolitical impact is a lot shallowerthan it may have seemed back in 1994. The message ofForrest Gumpseems to be that defying the status quo is damnable and deadly, while quietly sticking to it is the honorable thing to do. It isn’t something that’s felt quite right to critics as the movie has aged, leading them to call the movieentertaining but superficial.
Forrest Gump
9’A Beautiful Mind' (2001)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 74%
For the most part,Ron Howardhas never been a filmmaker that critics nor audiences particularly love, but he’s undeniably made some pretty good movies. If the Academy is to be believed, these includeA Beautiful Mind, a moving biopic about mathematical geniusJohn Nash, who made an astonishing discovery early in his career that led him to international acclaim. However, he soon found himself on a harrowing journey of self-discovery.
A Beautiful Mindisn’t exactly one ofthe greatest modern biopics, but it’s quite all right, and both critics and audiences have mostly been favorable to it as time has passed.Russell Croweis phenomenal, Oscar-baity though his performance may be (as is the rest of the movie). Still, while critics on Rotten Tomatoes approve ofA Beautiful Mind’s humane portrayal of mental illness, they also feel that Howard’sby-the-numbers stylistic and narrative approachto this historical figure doesn’t do him justice.
A Beautiful Mind
8’Around the World in 80 Days' (1956)
Although it’s typically considered one ofthe worst Best Picture Oscar winnersof all time,Around the World in 80 Dayssometimes gets more hate than it deserves, as its mostly positive Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score proves. Based onJules Verne’s seminal adventure novel of the same title, it’s a nearly 3-hour-long epic about a Victorian Englishman who bets that with the world’s new steamships and railways, he can get around the globe in 80 days.
Critics seem to like the movie a bit more than audiences (it holds a 57% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes). They commonly agree with general viewers thatAround the World in 80 Daysisway too long and lacking in creative whimsy. However, they also like its cheerful tone and the epic production qualities, even if they would have appreciated the budget going to a stronger script instead of just an endless string of pointless cameos.
Around the World in 80 Days
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7’Crash' (2004)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 73%
One shouldn’t be fooled by its relatively high Rotten Tomatoes score: in audiences' eyes,Crashis usually agreed to be theweakest Best Picture winner, not just of the 2000sbut of all time. Set over 36 hours in Los Angeles, it follows a handful of disparate people’s lives as they intertwine in a collage of stories of race, loss, and redemption.
Some Rotten Tomatoes critics were willing to giveCrashsome leeway and grant it a positive rating due to its strong cast, cinematography, and score. However, pretty much everyone who reviewed it also had plenty to say about its shortcomings. The now-infamousCrashisawfully on-the-nose about its social and political messaging, its characters range from unlikable to forgettable, and its themes are so painfully shallow and infantile that they don’t really pack much of a punch.
6’The Great Ziegfeld' (1936)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 72%
Throughout the 1930s, the Oscars were just finding their footing. The rulebook was an ever-evolving issue, and campaigning was very different from today. Becauseof the awards' youth, many duds won Best Picture despite aging quite badly. Such is the case forThe Great Ziegfeld, a musical biopic about the ups and downs ofFlorenz Ziegfeld Jr., a legendary Broadway impresario famous for his extravagant stage revues.
Although this big romp of a musical extravaganza is stylish and sophisticated, it’s still one ofthe worst musicals that have won Best Picture. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics have pointed fingers at the movie’s painfully excessive length (it’s nearly three hours long) and its many historical inaccuracies. Sinceit favors style over substance so much, many critics weren’t afraid to give it a thumbs down.
5’Cavalcade' (1933)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 64%
The jump betweenThe Great Ziegfeld’s Tomatometer rating andCavalcade’s is huge, and it isn’t hard to see why. It was the sixth movie that ever won Best Picture, and it’s a romantic tragedy portraying the many triumphs and tragedies of two English families, one upper-class and one working-class, from 1899 to 1933. Sprawling but mawkish,Cavalcadewastes its potential on what’s essentially a bad soap opera plot.
One ofthe worst war movies of the 20th century,Cavalcadefeels more like a history lesson than a proper, emotionally compelling film. It’s hard to care about its characters or story, which has led many critics over the years to call ita pointless string of events that don’t add up to a greater connective theme. It looks and sounds great for the time, but manipulating audiences' emotions isn’t something that they ever appreciate. Certainly not ninety years later.
4’Out of Africa' (1985)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 63%
Out of Africais the only film not from Hollywood’s Golden Age with a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score under 70%, which kind of says everything one needs to know about how much critics like it. It’s a period drama set in 20th-century colonial Kenya when a Danish baroness and plantation owner has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter.
Out of Africawon a whopping seven Oscars, a couple of which it probably deserved. The film’s cinematography, for instance, is absolutely stunning, as areMeryl StreepandRobert Redford’s performances. However, the majority of critics agreed thatOut of Africawas alsoglacially paced, disjointed, and, quite frankly, boring. Thus, it’s usually agreed to be one ofthe weakest Best Picture Oscar winners ever.
Out of Africa
3’Cimarron' (1931)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 52%
Blatantly misogynistic and full of offensive racial stereotypes,Cimarronis, quite unsurprisingly,many people’s least favorite Best Picture winner ever. It’s a Western about a newspaper editor settling in an Oklahoma boom town with his reluctant wife at the end of the 19th century. Very fittingly, just a little under half of the critics who have reviewed the film on Rotten Tomatoes have given it a thumbs down.
Certain moviesmight have a better reputationwithout their Best Picture status — notCimarron. Without its Best Picture status, it would have very likely been lost to the sands of oblivion or remembered asone of the most politically incorrect Westerns of Classical Hollywood. Critics don’t neglect to praise the movie’s impressive technical qualities, but they also pull no punches when critiquing the slow pacing, bad ending, and terribly aged depictions of race and gender.
2’The Greatest Show on Earth' (1952)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 50%
The greatCecil B. DeMillewas one of the biggest and most important filmmakers of the early years of Hollywood’s Golden Age, but it’s not like he could do no wrong. Somehow,one of the wrongs he did ended up winning Best Picture. It wasThe Greatest Show on Earth, a 2-and-a-half-hour family epic about the lives of the crew of a circus spectacle.
The film only won Best Picture and Best Writing, a rare occurrence that serves as a testament to the fact that it is really nothing all that special. It has quite a few things going for it, fromJimmy Stewartwearing clown makeup toactors doing their own stuntsbefore it was cool. However, critics were particularly stricken byThe Greatest Show on Earth’s overlong andclichéd story, shallow themes, and melodramatic plot.
The Greatest Show on Earth
1’The Broadway Melody' (1929)
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer Score: 42%
The second-ever Academy Awards gave the Best Picture honor to a movie still remembered by critics and audiences alike as the weakest to ever win the award:The Broadway Melody, one of the first musicals ever made. It’s about a pair of sisters from the vaudeville circuit trying to make it big on Broadway, but matters of the heart suddenly get in the way.
The Broadway Melodyis one ofthe least popular Best Picture winnersin that very few people have actually gotten around to seeing it, but that’s probably for the best. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes would certainly say so. They appreciate the film as a historical document but little else.Bloated, plain, and awfully boring by modern standards, it must have surely been a delectable novelty back in 1929 when talkies were still pretty new. Alas, to viewers almost a century later, it’s a slog that only Oscars completionists actually have the patience to get through.
