10 Best Picture Oscar Winners That Aged Terribly
1. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Driving Miss Daisy suffers from many of the same problems that Crash does. However, because it’s a period piece, and because it’s from almost thirty years ago, it somehow feels like it has aged even more terribly than Crash has.
If you haven’t seen Driving Miss Daisy (and if you haven’t you really do not need to) it’s the story of a cranky old woman named Miss Daisy, played by Jessica Tandy. She is pretty racist, but her son then hires an African-American driver named Hoke (played by Morgan Freeman) to cart her around. Despite their differences, the two become friends, and through the magic of cinema, racism is solved. Again, it’s hamfisted, ridiculously naïve, and woefully misguided.
To say that this film has aged poorly is the biggest possible understatement because the film felt like an anachronism even in 1989. Part of the reason it was so glaringly dated was because earlier in the year Spike Lee had released Do the Right Thing - his blockbusting and profoundly original take on American race relations.
Much like Citizen Kane was everything that HGWMV wasn’t, Lee’s film was revolutionary compared to Miss Daisy. Do the Right Thing was bold, aggressive, challenging, exciting, and it asked chillingly relevant questions.
There is a reason why, nearly thirty years after it’s release, nobody talks about Driving Miss Daisy. And there is a reason why Do the Right Thing is still studied on university courses, and name-dropped by people like Barack Obama. Driving Miss Daisy speaks to those who believe in a romantic past that never existed, and who do not want to challenge their preconceptions of race. That’s not reality, and that doesn’t resonate in 2017.
Because of that, no Best Picture winner has aged quite as terribly as this snoozefest.