Is 'The Reader' the worst film in the last decade to be nominated for Best Picture?

February 3, 10:58 PMAtlanta Movies ExaminerRyan McNally

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Every year, it seems like there’s a surprise winner when the Oscar nominations are announced, and this year’s stunner was The Reader, which scored five nods, including Best Picture, and earned the ire of Dark Knight fanboys everywhere, many of who blamed TDK’s exclusion on The Reader.

I was as shocked as anyone, having loudly proclaimed on AwardsDaily.com that The Reader “didn’t have a prayer” at Best Picture, citing the film’s lowly tomatometer score (60) and piddling box office (well under $10 million at the time) as evidence.

Now that a few weeks have passed, and I’ve had time to remove foot from mouth and dine on a healthy portion of crow, it’s time to revisit the issue: Is The Reader the weakest film of the last decade to score a Best Picture nomination? Much of my argument for why it wouldn’t be nominated was based on the fact that the film was barely in the red (fresh) at Rotten Tomatoes (a site that measures critical response to movies), and to my knowledge no film that close to the brink had ever been nominated for the Academy’s top prize.

For the purpose of this article, I won’t be making a personal case for or against The Reader (which will be easy, since I haven’t seen it yet). Rather, I’ll be comparing films based on a few metrics (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Internet Movie Database) to see how they measure up. For starters, I headed over to Rotten Tomatoes to do some digging, and as it turns out, The Reader is in fact the past decade’s lowest-scoring film to nab a Best Picture nomination. The lowest, in ascending order:

The Reader (60)
Chocolat (62)
Babel (68)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (71)
The Cider House Rules (72)

As you can see, it’s unusual for a movie scoring less than 70 to be nominated, and rarer still for one less than 65 to be so honored. Of course, Rotten Tomatoes is but one measurement of critical response. Moving over to Metacritic, I ran the numbers again on the Best Pic nominees from the past decade, and the results were notably different. Three of the five films changed between the two lists. The most notable common denominator? The Reader, again scoring the lowest:

The Reader (58)
The Green Mile (61)
Chocolat (64)
Moulin Rouge (66)
Finding Neverland (67)

Looking at the two lists above, it’s almost indisputable that The Reader is the worst-reviewed film of the past decade to make its way into the Best Picture race, with Chocolat running close behind. But we also know that critics can sometimes be a big bunch of weenies. Cruising over to IMDB, does The Reader fare any better among moviegoers?

Keeping in mind that scores tend to decline over time, here are the five lowest-rated Best Pic nominees from the past decade among IMDB users:

Gosford Park (7.2)
Erin Brockovich (7.2)
Chocolat (7.3)
Seabiscuit (7.4)
Gangs of New York (7.4)

Again, Chocolat comes up less than sweet. And how does The Reader fare? About average for a Best Pic nominee (which is pretty strong, as you’d expect), with its current 7.9 score comparable to last year’s Atonement. The Reader is the lowest rated among this year’s Best Picture nominees, but it’s still highly respectable.

Nonetheless, the film’s IMDB score isn’t strong enough to compensate for its lackluster standing with critics. When you factor in all three metrics, two films stand below the pack:

The Reader (2008)
Chocolat (2000)

What do these films have in common? The magic of Harvey Weinstein, who exec produced each and led the charge to get the movies nominated.

Interestingly, looking back at my article on the past decade’s five top films not to be nominated for Best Picture, three of the five came from the two years above. This year, the victims were The Wrestler and, yes, The Dark Knight. And back in 2000, a little indie called Memento mesmerized critics and audiences alike but failed to tally a Best Pic nomination.

As for my personal pick for the worst Best Picture nominee from 1999-2008, it’s an easy selection: Gosford Park. Spectacular reviews aside, I found the Robert Altman flick to be a snoozer—literally.

So, what movies do you think are the worst Best Picture nominees from the past decade? And fans of 'The Reader,' don’t be shy: Tell us why you think the film has been underrated, especially among critics.