I don't hate a lot of movies. Sometimes, a film comes along special enough to make the list.
"Crash" is often cited as one of the worst Best Picture winners of all time, for many reasons. One of the most popular is that it beat "Brokeback Mountain," a truly progressive-for-its-time movie directed, written and performed beautifully. "Brokeback" went on a steamroll that season, winning at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, PGAs, DGAs and WGAs -- making its eventual loss all the more disappointing. Ang Lee even won Best Director on Oscar night.
But "Crash" need not be judged only by what it beat. The movie does a good job at being bad on its own. Paul Haggis' childish, sloppy treatise on race and racism in post-9/11 America plays out with all the nuance of an Alex Jones video. It comes across more as an earnest feature-length adaptation of the "Avenue Q" song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" than anything remotely intelligent or thoughtful.
Haggis once said he wrote "Crash" because he wanted to "bust liberals," so I suppose he accomplished his mission. This poorly constructed, horribly written, utterly annoying film certainly isn't a liberal favorite. Instead, it claims the title of being perhaps the single worst Best Picture winner of all time. To this day, I have no idea what kind of mass psychosis allowed this to claim the Academy's top honor.
