10 Movies That Thought They Were Smart (But Really Weren't)

3. Crash

The winner of 2006's Best Picture Oscar rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way due to it beating out the Best Picture frontrunner, Brokeback Mountain, a film of considerably greater subtlety and artistry, even if for all intents and purposes, Crash is a solid film yet a rather underwhelming Oscar winner. Paul Haggis' intense drama focuses on the complexity of race relations over two days in Los Angeles, though despite amassing a huge and impressive ensemble cast, Crash takes the soft, safe option by simply throwing its hands up and saying "yep, everybody's probably a bit racist now and then." Not exactly that complex, then. Most of the movie's individual scenes are interesting to watch and beautifully acted, but they don't really add up to a compelling tableau in the same way that other similar movies like Traffic and Magnolia do because the goal here is so single-minded and morally unambiguous. For any moderately well-read, intelligent adult, the movie's "revelations" won't be surprising at all, and though it might try to posture itself as a slick sociology lecture, it really feels more like the cliff notes. In blanketing basically everyone with some form of a racism charge, Haggis' film pretends to be thought-provoking (after all, who knew that racism is bad?) all the while being careful not to offend any sector of society.