5 Worst Best Picture Oscars Winners of All-Time

Shakespeare in Love

Don’t get me wrong – Shakespeare in Love is actually a pretty good movie. It’s romantic, funny and charming. Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow have great chemistry. There’s a solid feminist message here about women wanting to make their own choices and control their own destinies. And even though Dame Judi Dench probably also did not deserve to win an Oscar for this movie, her eight minutes of screentime as Queen Elizabeth I are sheer perfection. But this really didn’t deserve to take home Best Picture.

Dench’s Oscar win, I generally find easier to accept in the grand scheme of things. After all, it’s generally accepted that Dench had been completely robbed of a win for her performance in Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown the year before. Make-up awards absolutely happen. But despite all of Shakespeare in Love’s charm, it probably only won because it was popular. It certainly made a lot of money for Miramax, and audiences adored it. The studio engaged in what some called a “blitzkrieg campaign” to promote the film to Oscar voters. And it clearly worked, since both Shakespeare and Paltrow took home awards.

And the thing is? It’s hard not to like Shakespeare in Love. It’s had to even be that mad that it won. Except when you look at the films it beat. Most notably, Steven Spielberg’s harrowing World War II masterpiece Saving Private Ryan. Widely lauded as one of the greatest war movies ever made, the fact that it didn’t take home Best Picture shocked many critics. The film is violent, gory, and extremely difficult to watch in places, but it’s an important film. And one that probably deserved to win.