Oscars: 'Green Book' is the worst best picture winner since 'Crash'
"Green Book" is the worst best picture Oscar winner since "Crash," and I don't make the comparison lightly.
Like that 2005 movie, Peter Farrelly's interracial buddy dramedy is insultingly glib and hucksterish, a self-satisfied crock masquerading as an olive branch. It reduces the long, barbaric and ongoing history of American racism to a problem, a formula, a dramatic equation that can be balanced and solved. "Green Book" is an embarrassment; the film industry's unquestioning embrace of it is another.
The differences between the two movies are as telling as the similarities. "Crash," a modern-day screamfest that racked up cross-cultural tensions by the minute, meant to leave you angry and wrung-out. Its Oscar triumph was a genuine shocker; it clearly had its fans, but for many its inferiority was self-evident.
"Green Book," a slick crowd-pleaser set in the Deep South in 1962, strains to put you in a good mood. Its victory is appalling but far from shocking: From the moment
