This year, Brendan Fraser won the Best Actor Oscar for The Whale (in which he played a 600-pound online writing instructor).
But at the 95th Academy Awards, some folks were against handing out the award to this movie because it got some backlash for supposedly “perpetuating hate against fat people.”
The Whale isn’t the first time Fraser has been in a polarising yet Oscar-winning film. Remember Crash from way back in 2004? That film was also one of the not-so-good Oscar-winning movies for the actor.
Crash got itself into the big leagues at the 78th Academy Awards. It was nominated for six awards and won three, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. But now people look back at it and say it’s the absolute worst movie to ever snatch up that Best Picture Oscar.
Why Brendan Fraser’s Crash is Considered The Worst Oscar Winning Movie?
The movie Crash revolves around Los Angeles, where detective Graham Waters and his partner Ria find themselves in a minor collision with a car driven by Kim Lee. Things get heated as Ria and Kim Lee trade some nasty racial insults. But it takes a turn when Waters heads to a crime scene where they’ve found the lifeless body of an unidentified child.
Brendan Fraser, who scored an Oscar for his lead performance in The Whale, plays District Attorney Rick Cabot in the film (husband to Bullock’s character Jean). They become victims when two young guys carjack them.
But, surprisingly, these two innocent folks are actually part of the corruption web that’s tangled up in the law enforcement system, which might seen as the root cause of all the chaos. Many outlets say the movie doesn’t exactly beat around the bush when tackling racial tensions. USA Today wrote in 2020:
“The cast is amazing (Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard, among others), the film not so much.”
The publication continued:
“The interweaving of stories set around social and xenophobic tensions in L.A. fumbles a bunch of chances to deal with racism and multiculturalism in a real way. Making matters worse, it stole a best picture win from ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ a film that treated gay romance with heart and care.”
That is a reason why people seemed way more into Fraser’s earlier works, like his Mummy movies, Airheads, or even Encino Man than his Oscar-winning film.
Over 15 Years of Crash, But It Still Remains Uncelebrated Today
Crash grossed $98 million worldwide on a $6.5 million budget. It’s got those three Academy Awards to its name, which usually means the film gets some respect. But you know what’s strange? Even with all that, Crash never got the appreciation it had expected.
Even the Academy itself seems to have had a change of heart. In 2015, The Hollywood Reporter polled “hundreds” of Academy members, and guess what? If they were voting in 2015, the Best Picture of 2005 would have gone to Brokeback Mountain instead of Crash.
There’s a common dislike of Crash because it won Best Picture in a year when there were some seriously strong movies like Brokeback Mountain (2005), Capote (2005), and Good Night and Good Luck (2005). Everyone has different opinions about which one was the strongest, but Brokeback Mountain was definitely the crowd favorite that year. As Variety asserted:
“The inclination, 15 years after its release, is to assume that Crash’s win matters. Really, as with most things, it only matters as much as we let it.”
Watch Crash on Prime Video.
Source: USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety
