Some movies show up on critics’ Top 10 lists, sweep awards season, and spark thinkpieces for weeks, but when you actually watch them, you’re left thinking, “Huh?” Maybe it’s a clunky script hiding under prestige polish. Maybe it’s a case of Important Themes delivered with the subtlety of a jackhammer. Or maybe it’s just that gnawing feeling halfway through: Wait… is this actually kind of bad?
With this in mind, this list looks at some critical darlings that, for all their acclaim, are deeply flawed. Some were made with good intentions but shallow execution, while others coasted on style, timing, or cultural hype, ultimately amounting to nothing. Critics embraced them on release, but the hype was overinflated and, in hindsight, they really don’t measure up to their lofty expectations.
10
‘Us’ (2019)
Directed by Jordan Peele
“Who are you people?” “We’re Americans.” Jordan Peele‘s Us arrived burdened with enormous expectations. How could it not, after the seismic brilliance of Get Out? It’s not awful, but it’s still a pretty bad recent case of the sophomore slump. The premise is solid: a literal underclass of doppelgängers rising from the shadows to claim their place in the sun. But the more the movie explains, the more it collapses, and while it’s packed with eerie images, Us ultimately stumbles under its conceptual weight.
Lupita Nyong’o gives a haunting dual performance, and the cinematography is often stunning, but these elements aren’t enough. The symbolism is clumsy, the logistics incoherent, and the horror veers into unintentional comedy. By the time you’re trying to make sense of underground rabbit farms and synchronized nationwide attacks by scissor-wielding clones, the spell is long broken. Us is a film that wants to say something profound about America, but forgets to anchor its allegory to any believable emotional core. Clever, but hollow.
9
‘Out of Africa’ (1985)
Directed by Sydney Pollack
“When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.” There’s no denying Out of Africa looks gorgeous: the sweeping plains, golden sunrises, and lush orchestral score all scream Oscar bait of the highest order. Meryl Streep‘s Oscar-nominated performance is great too (as usual). However, beneath its painterly visuals and Karen Blixen‘s romanticized narration lies an underwhelming colonial fantasy. It’s a little boring at times and, at 161 minutes, definitely overlong.
In other words, Out of Africa is a prestige epic that sometimes confuses self-importance for meaning. The romance between Streep’s Karen and Robert Redford‘s Denys also feels a little thin at times. Their story verges on melodrama in many scenes. In the end, for all its grandeur, Out of Africa is strangely inert, a slow-moving, self-congratulatory ode to suffering aristocrats. It won Best Picture, but it’s unclear how many people still go back to this movie now.
8
‘The Danish Girl’ (2015)
Directed by Tom Hooper
“I believe that I am a woman.” The Danish Girl had all the elements of an awards darling, including a historical setting, a story equal parts tragic and inspiring, and a “brave” performance by an actor getting outside their comfort zone. Yet under its tasteful exterior lies a film that never quite understands its subject. This is a movie about gender that leans away from ambiguity and complexity, trading it for feel-good platitudes.
Eddie Redmayne‘s portrayal of Lili Elbe is delicate but strangely surface-level, with the film often slipping into voyeurism. The real Lili was a pioneer, someone who risked everything to live as she wanted, but here she’s reduced to a fragile symbol, rendered palatable for the Academy. Director Tom Hooper brings his usual sense of glossy seriousness (the aesthetics are undeniably well-crafted), but the result still feels unsatisfying. The Danish Girl is well-meaning but shallow and arguably out of step with the character it tries to portray.
7
‘The Theory of Everything’ (2014)
Directed by James Marsh
“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” Nothing against Redmayne, but similar charges could be leveled against The Theory of Everything. Stephen Hawking‘s life was extraordinary; this movie is not. This biopic takes one of the greatest scientific minds in history and reduces him to little more than a romantic backdrop. It’s less about physics or black holes than it is about devotion, disability, and quiet British resilience, admirable themes, perhaps, but delivered with the emotional depth of a greeting card.
Redmayne’s Oscar-winning performance is committed, but the movie doesn’t seem especially curious about Hawking’s intellect or ideas. Instead, it paints him in broad, saintly strokes, ironing out the more difficult truths of his personality and marriage. Felicity Jones is stuck playing the long-suffering wife, and the narrative turns Hawking’s story into a generic tale of triumph over adversity. All in all, the whole thing is frustratingly safe, a movie that plays like a prestige checklist rather than a real portrait of genius.
6
‘Don’t Look Up’ (2021)
Directed by Adam McKay
“We really did have everything, didn’t we?” Don’t Look Up wanted to be the defining satire of our time — a furious howl at apathy, media distraction, and political denialism. Instead, it comes off like a dinner party rant stretched into a feature film. The message is urgent, sure, but the delivery is smug, scattershot, and gratingly self-satisfied. The movie barrels through its metaphors with all the subtlety of a meteor crashing through your living room window. It’s nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play well-meaning scientists trying to warn humanity of its impending doom, but they’re trapped in a film more interested in sneering than storytelling. The tone veers wildly from broad comedy to bleak despair, and almost every character feels like a Twitter thread given human form. Fans expected way more from the superstar cast and director Adam McKay, whose earlier efforts, The Big Short and Vice, were fantastic.
5
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2018)
Directed by Bryan Singer (and Dexter Fletcher, uncredited)
“I’m just a musical prostitute, my dear.” It’s ironic that a movie about Queen could be this tame. Bohemian Rhapsody is loud and glossy and full of iconic songs, but when it comes to Freddie Mercury himself, the film tiptoes. While Rami Malek gives a physically impressive performance, the script flattens Mercury into a tragic, lonely genius in need of saving by his bandmates. Plus, it plays fast and loose with the facts, reshaping the man’s life to serve generic narrative ends.
Timelines are shuffled, conflicts are fabricated, and moments of real emotion are often drowned beneath montages. The film seems almost afraid of Freddie’s sexuality, treating it as a shadowy detour from the band’s true greatness. And while the Live Aid sequence is undeniably thrilling, it plays less like cinema and more like karaoke cosplay. Bohemian Rhapsody won a baffling number of Oscars, but looking back, it feels like a greatest hits album with all the wrong tracks playing the loudest.
4
‘Barbie’ (2023)
Directed by Greta Gerwig
“Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved.” Few films in recent memory have tried to be everything quite like Barbie. It’s a surreal comedy, a (supposedly) feminist manifesto, a musical, a toy commercial, and a therapy session, sometimes all in the same scene. However, for all its pink-drenched ambition, the movie buckles under its weight. It wants to be profound and poppy at once, but often lands in a weird limbo between parody and sermon.
Margot Robbie brings charm, and Ryan Gosling steals scenes with deadpan brilliance (and solid vocal chops). But the script lurches between tones, and the monologues (especially America Ferrera‘s viral one) are nowhere near as deep or visionary as their most ardent fans give them credit for. The themes in this movie are so garbled and contradictory that it’s hard to know where to begin. The more one tries to analyze Barbie, the more its ideas seem juvenile and absurd.
3
‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ (2011)
Directed by Stephen Daldry
“If the sun were to explode, you wouldn’t even know for eight minutes.” Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a film that mistakes noise for feeling. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer‘s novel, it follows a young boy (Thomas Horn) with unspecified neurodivergence as he scours post-9/11 New York in search of a lock that fits a key left by his father, who died in the attacks. It’s a premise ripe for subtlety, grief, and emotional resonance, but the execution is anything but. At times, it almost feels manipulative.
Every moment is scored within an inch of its life, every encounter wrung dry for sentiment. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are wasted in roles that feel less like people than tear-delivery devices. It’s a film so desperate to mean something that it forgets how people actually behave in the face of trauma. It’s emotionally overengineered, practically market-tested, lab-grown Oscar bait.
2
‘The Blind Side’ (2009)
Directed by John Lee Hancock
“I don’t want to hurt anyone. But if I have to, I will.” The Blind Side may have won Sandra Bullock an Oscar, but it also embodies a particular brand of feel-good storytelling that’s aged poorly (and that’s without even getting started on the feuds and legal battles that have recently come to light). It tells the story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), a young Black man adopted by a wealthy white family who help him become an NFL star. But in doing so, the flick turns a real human being into a side character in what is supposed to be his story.
The film is super sentimental, simplifying complex issues and emotions into one family’s kindness. Michael’s internal world is barely explored, his dialogue sparse, his agency limited. Everything revolves around the goodness of the Tuohys and their ability to rescue him from poverty. It’s not malicious, but it is reductive. Looking back, it feels more patronizing than powerful.
1
‘Crash’ (2004)
Directed by Paul Haggis
“In L.A., nobody touches you.” Crash is perhaps the most infamous example of Oscar bait triumphing over artistic merit. It tries to say everything about race in America… and ends up saying almost nothing with clarity or nuance. The structure is ambitious: a web of interconnected lives and escalating misunderstandings, all meant to expose the prejudices lurking beneath daily life. Nevertheless, what could have been powerful is rendered trite by blunt-force writing and shallow character arcs.
The film’s idea of insight is having everyone be a little bit racist, then redeeming them in the next scene with a contrived moment of grace. It’s less a drama than a lecture, one that mistakes shouting for sincerity and coincidence for meaning. The cast is stacked, but their performances are caged inside shallowly written scenes. Crash had ardent supporters, but when it won Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain, the backlash was immediate and lasting. Today, it serves as a cautionary tale: important themes don’t make a film important.