20 Worst Best Picture Film Nominees Since 2010
7. The Theory Of Everything
The Theory of Everything, which was easily the worst Best Picture nominee of 2015, is yet another biopic that has great acting, but not an awful lot else. Films like this being nominated are bad enough, but 2014 was the best year for films of the 2010s and as such, Theory's inclusion is even more depressing.
Why couldn't Nightcrawler have been nominated instead? Or Inherent Vice? Or Calvary? Or one of the many great blockbusters from that year, such as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes?
Credit where credit's due, Eddie Redmayne's performance as Stephen Hawking is a terrific dramatic turn and a masterpiece of physical acting with few parallels in any recent movie, while Felicity Jones is also absolutely excellent. But their work can only elevate a seriously flawed film so much.
Theory evidently means well and can be touching, but for the most part it's a thoroughly tedious and overly subdued affair that often feels like an unfocused feature-length montage, while it also gets the focus fatally wrong.
Instead of exploring Hawking as a man or even looking that much at his scientific genius or him dealing with his disability, the film focuses on his marriage of all things and ultimately devolves into a sappy love story. And, when you realize that the film completely misrepresents and sanitizes the real marriage between Stephen and Jane Hawking (Jones), that makes an already bland film even more insufferable.