And My Fair Lady being Oscar veterans, voters can’t resist a jig or two. Chicago dominated the 2003 Academy Awards with six Oscar wins. Most of the big stars were nominated and it took awards for best set design and costumes.
Chicago focuses two female murderesses, Velma (Catherine Zeta Jones) and Roxie (Renee Zellweger), and their fight for the spotlight and freedom. On stage, it’s a fun time, but once it hit the big screen, the pizzazz wasn’t there. The satirical elements that made the Broadway play so great were immediately overpowered by the sexy and glitzy sets and the horrible singing by big stars who just wanted a paycheck (Richard Gere, anyone?). Zeta Jones may have been fantastic as Velma Kelly, but that doesn’t make the whole film best picture material. This was a mess that not even Billy Flynn could defend.
What Should Have Won: The Pianist, Gangs of New York
12. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
As far as sappy melodramas go, Kramer vs. Kramer is pretty run of the mill. It focuses mainly on the relationship between a workaholic dad and his son after a divorce tears their family apart. Then a nasty custody battles ensues which illustrates Ted and Joanna’s true characters and how a small child can change that.
There’s nothing overly significant about the film as a whole except for the exceptional performances by Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep (for which they rightfully earned Oscars). The sentimentality makes for a nice film to watch once or twice – like a Lifetime film – but it doesn’t hold a candle to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
What Should Have Won: Apocalypse Now
11. Ordinary People (1981)
1981 was a particularly raging year for film awards. One of Martin Scorsese’s best films, Raging Bull got snubbed for most of the big awards (but at least Robert De Niro got Best Actor) in favor of a very ordinary film called Ordinary People. The film is about a family trying to mourn and heal after the oldest son dies in a boating accident. The youngest son, Conrad feels survivor’s guilt and PTSD while his mother, Beth, just cares about getting back to normal rather than helping him.
Their Best Picture win shows that voters will often prefer “realistic” family dramas over films that push boundaries. People love to defend this film because they claim that it openly discusses mental illness when it was still taboo to acknowledge. While that may be true, it quickly got buried and now is barely even talked about. Besides that, it plays like a generic TV movie. On the other hand, Raging Bull is a fascinating character study that also showcases another type of mental illness, and has been called the best film of the 80s time and time again.
What Should Have Won: Raging Bull
10. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Frequently regarded as the worst Best Picture recipient of all time, it’s not entirely clear how Around the World in 80 Days got into the running, let alone how it walked away with the actual award. It most likely had to do with the obscene demands that the production had. They used over 140 sets, 8, 552 animals, 74, 000 costumes, and over 68, 000 extras. This set many records in the film industry (some that haven’t been reached since), but still lacked the spark that the Jules Verne’s novel had. The shallow, predictable comedy beat out epics such as the The Ten Commandments and The King and I. The film was just as long as the other nominees, but relied on pretty backgrounds and shallow caricatures of culture, using cheesy, “ethnic” music and stereotypical costumes to show the distances its main characters travel.
