This is a much more difficult call than naming the best film ever nominated for Best Picture (obviously, The Godfather). I did a quick Google search and saw a lot of different nominees, some of which I thought were ridiculous (I really liked JoJo Rabbit). It’s hard to go back in time to judge just how bad old films were. I have seen “Greatest Show on Earth”, and it’s not good, but I’ve seen Ivanhoe too and it’s not clear to me it is that much better. Dr. Dolittle has been my go to worst Best Film nominee (I hated it even as a kid in the demo when it came out). More recent films in contention for me are Prince of Tides and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
But I finally got around to watching “Don’t Look Up” this evening and, wow, is it bad. It is basically a mediocre 4 min SNL sketch stretched to 2 hrs and 20 minutes. I don’t often agree with Sikula, but in this case he has been understated in his criticism. I write this as a huge fan of Vice and, especially “The Big Short”, which is one of my favorite films of the last 25 years. DLU may not be the worst film ever nominated for Best Picture, but if it’s not it is in the top three. I’m not that surprised the film stank; they took a big swing and whiffed. It happens. I think it would have been a lot better had they played it straight, as in Big Short, but it’s easy to say that after the fact. But I am shocked it got nominated. Why did that happen? Who thinks this is a great movie? Even if you thought it was sporadically amusing, like Anchorman II, you can’t really think it is good. I laughed at one joke, which paid off during the credits, and that might just have been relief that it was finally over. It strikes me that the thinking behind nominating this film is the same as that behind nominating other stinkers like Green Book, Blind Side and The Help. Lazy arm chair liberals mark it as somehow making a socially significant point, and they want to pat themselves on the back for getting behind it. On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 11:03 PM [email protected] > Let me just say that, after enduring the grisly "Don't Look Up" tonight, I > owe Mr. Sorkin an apology. McKay's effort (emphasis on the "effort") is so > inept as to make Sorkins' look like a 30's Paramount comedy. > > --Dave Sikula > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJ%3DPFo-mg6B0DbbdFAOXhj2PTs33eWj8KjsDGUNEzH4VA%40mail.gmail.com.
