10 Worst Oscar Best Picture Nominees of All Time, Ranked

There is no bigger honor in the film industry as a whole than to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, an award handed out every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929. However, while the majority of movies that have been up for such an honor over the years have been, at the very least, decent, there are definitely some noteworthy exceptions.

Many of the worst Best Picture nominees ever are old films; ones that have aged poorly and serve as a testament that, in its infancy, cinema was still a developing art form trying to find its footing. Then, there are much newer movies that have less of an excuse, but are every bit as terrible. Whichever kind of films they are and no matter when they were released, these movies are proof that the Oscars don’t always get it right.

10

‘Crash’ (2004)

Nominated for: 6 Oscars

Perhaps the most infamous Best Picture winner of modern times, the multi-narrative racial drama Crash has as much depth as a paddling pool and as much subtlety as a hippo hiding behind a streetlamp. Although it did well with critics and at the box office at the time, the vitriol it receives today isn’t new; its win over the far superior Brokeback Mountain was a shocker even in 2005.

No matter how much one hates its self-important script and shallow tone, it’s hard to deny that Crash has some redeeming qualities that elevate it far above other abysmal Best Picture nominees. The talented cast does a solid job for the most part, the atmosphere of anxiety built by director Paul Haggis actually works well here and there, and the score and visuals are fantastic. Even still, this is far from enough to prevent the movie’s atrocious script from bringing the whole thing down to the mud.

Crash

Release Date

May 6, 2005

Runtime

112 minutes

• 
• 

  Sandra Bullock

  Jean Cabot

9

‘Doctor Dolittle’ (1967)

Nominated for: 9 Oscars

Although a few people feel some loving nostalgia toward the 1967 version of Doctor Dolittle starring Rex Harrison, this musical adaptation of the series of children’s books from the ’20s – ’50s leaves much to be desired when viewed by someone who holds no such attachments. Boring, criminally overlong (clocking in at 2 and a half hours), and emotionally uncompelling, it somehow still found the love of the Academy in the same year as Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate.

Doctor Dolittle is also one of the worst Best Picture Golden Globe nominees of all time. How such a silly little film managed to get as much award recognition as this one did is still a mystery many decades later. It’s not aggressively bad like some other Best Picture nominees, and it definitely has some charm, but it’s too long and drawn-out for children and too dumb for grown ups to truly enjoy.

Doctor Dolittle

Release Date

December 19, 1967

Runtime

151 Minutes

Cast

• 

  Rex Harrison

  Dr. John Dolittle

• 

  Samantha Eggar

  Emma Fairfax

• 

  Anthony Newley

  Matthew Mugg

• 

8

‘The Hollywood Revue of 1929’ (1929)

Nominated for: 1 Oscar

The Hollywood Revue of 1929, also known simply as The Hollywood Revue, is one of the most forgotten Best Picture nominees ever — and certainly for good reason. It’s an all-star revue featuring 25 of MGM’s biggest contract players, from Joan Crawford to the Brox sisters and Laurel and Hardy.

To be perfectly fair, it’s not entirely the movie’s fault that it’s so bad. It was released near the very beginning of silent cinema’s awkward transition to talkies; as a result of this transition being so clunky, genres as sound-centric as musicals were most often very stilted and gimmicky. This is no exception. There are definitely worse movie musicals, but even as a piece of history, Hollywood Revue is tortuous to get through.

The Hollywood Revue of 1929

Release Date

November 23, 1929

Runtime

115 minutes

• 

  Conrad Nagel

  Self – Master of Ceremonies

• 
• 

  John Gilbert

  Self / Juliet

• 

7

‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ (2011)

Nominated for: 2 Oscars

One of the most contrived Oscar-bait movies ever made, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was a major box office disappointment and mostly hated by critics when it came out. So, how did this melodrama about a nine-year-old searching for the lock that matches a mysterious key left behind by his dead father make it to a Best Picture Oscar nod (which, by the way, was its only nomination along with a Supporting Actor nom for Max von Sydow)? That’s the same thing that Oscars fans have been wondering for the past thirteen years.

Entirely banal in its oversentimentality, horribly manipulative in how it uses the tragedy of 9/11 as a lazy plot device, and almost exploitative in its transparent efforts to want to make Oscar voters cry, Extremely Loud is proof that trying to appeal to the Academy too much can lead to a terrible film. Still, it clearly worked on voters, so what’s a regular viewer to do?

6

‘Cavalcade’ (1933)

Nominated for: 4 Oscars

The sixth-ever winner of the Best Picture Oscar, Cavalcade is a tragic period romance portraying the triumphs and tragedies of two English families: The upper-class Marryots and the working-class Bridgeses, from the end of the 19th century to 1933. Poorly paced and mawkish in tone, it’s a terribly dated movie that’s not really worth watching today.

Panned by many as one of the worst Oscar winning movies ever, Cavalcade must have been quite impressive and effective back in its time, but it’s perfectly fair to see old movies in context and still say they don’t hold up today; such is the case here. Frank Lloyd‘s direction is decent and the production qualities are good, but the uneven pacing and uninteresting story have left this slice of history mostly obsolete as a piece of entertainment.

Cavalcade

Release Date

February 8, 1933

Runtime

112 minutes

• 

  Clive Brook

  Robert Marryot

• 

  Diana Wynyard

  Jane Marryot

• 

  Una O’Connor

  Ellen Bridges

• 

  Herbert Mundin

  Alfred Bridges

5

‘Anthony Adverse’ (1936)

Nominated for: 7 Oscars

It’s not only acceptable, but crucial, to look at old films and appreciate their merits, acknowledge that they were a product of their time, yet still be able to critique outdated aspects. What could be more outdated than an epic historical drama about an orphan forged in adversity who tries to pull himself out of his difficult situation by becoming a slave trader?

Even setting aside this terrible aspect of the film’s plot, however, it’s still a pretty abysmal movie. In fact, with an 18% acceptance rate from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s the lowest-rated Best Picture nominee ever on the review aggregator. Visually lavish but overly ambitious, glacially paced, and boringly episodic, not even a pair of great performances by the legendary Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland could save Anthony Adverse from being terrible.

Anthony Adverse

Release Date

August 26, 1936

Runtime

141 minutes

Cast

• 

  Fredric March

  Anthony Adverse

• 

  Olivia de Havilland

  Angela Guiseppe

• 

  Donald Woods

  Vincent Nolte

• 

4

‘Cimarron’ (1931)

Nominated for: 7 Oscars

Blatantly racist and misogynistic, aside from being painfully boring by modern standard, it’s no wonder why Cimarron tends to be considered not only the weakest Best Picture winner of the 1930s, but one of the weakest of all time. Although reviews at the time were overwhelmingly positive, this is an example of a Western that has aged like milk.

Even trying to look at the film through a historical lens, it’s difficult to enjoy it in any way. It moves at a snail’s pace, it peaks in its opening scene and never reaches those same heights again, it’s populated with racist caricatures, and it’s not particularly entertaining by any modern standard. Film historians might find it ripe for study; but anyone outside that very tiny niche is better off steering clear of this outdated movie.

Cimarron

Release Date

February 9, 1931

Runtime

123 minutes

3

‘The Broadway Melody’ (1929)

Nominated for: 3 Oscars

Yet another musical that’s victim of the limitations of the birth of sound in cinema, The Broadway Melody is usually referred to as the single worst Best Picture winner of all time. The 2nd-ever winner of the award and the first sound film to earn it, it’s about two sisters from the vaudeville circuit trying to make it big on Broadway, though matters of the heart get in the way.

Calling Broadway Melody outdated would be the understatement of the century, to the point that, by any kind of modern standard imaginable, it’s a huge challenge to try and enjoy the movie in any sense nowadays. It’s interesting as a slice of Hollywood history, that’s a given; but the musical numbers are clunky, the performances come off as laughably awkward as a result of the limitations of the technology of the time, and the story feels like nothing but a poorly written backdrop to a poorly done gimmick.

The Broadway Melody

Release Date

June 6, 1929

Runtime

100 minutes

2

‘Trader Horn’ (1931)

Nominated for: 1 Oscar

Bad though it may be, Cimarron somehow wasn’t the worst film up for Best Picture at the 4th Academy Awards in 1931. That title would fall upon Trader Horn, one of the very few movies ever nominated for Best Picture and absolutely nothing else. It’s about two white traders in Africa in the 1870s who find a missionary’s daughter who was captured as a child by a tribe, and is now worshipped as a goddess.

One glance at the premise of the movie and the year it was made is enough to give one an idea of just how racially sensitive and politically correct it is; which is to say, not in the slightest. The typical “it’s just a product of its time” excuse doesn’t work here, either, as proved by the abundance of exceptional 1930s films that aren’t horribly racist; atrociously structured, written, and directed; and don’t have embarrassing performances by their cast. Any beauty and excitement that might have come from the film being shot on location (a groundbreaking and highly influential decision at the time) is destroyed by the movie being so poorly edited, so poorly written, and so ill-conceived.

Trader Horn

Release Date

February 3, 1931

Runtime

122 minutes

Cast

• 
• 

  Harry Carey

  Aloysius “Trader” Horn

• 
• 

1

‘Emilia Pérez’ (2024)

Nominated for: 13 Oscars

Yes, there are plenty of Best Picture nominees that could reasonably be called “terrible”; but many, if not most, of these movies fit such a category mostly because they’re old films that haven’t aged well. That makes it even more embarrassing that the Netflix original French film Emilia Pérez, a 2024 movie, is arguably the worst Best Picture nominee of all time.

Easily and by far one of the most awful Oscar-bait movies ever, Emilia Pérez is a poorly researched mess that’s actively detrimental to the trans community, public perception of Mexico, and groups fighting against public disappearances in the country. It’s a racist, transphobic, aesthetically unappealing, thematically barren failure of a movie that doesn’t even know how to musical. If ever a Best Picture nominee has tainted the Academy’s reputation, it’s this one.

Emilia Perez

Release Date

November 13, 2024

Runtime

130 Minutes

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