Did you know that most of the March 2007 volume of College English is devoted to the 2004 film Crash? The opening essay by David G. Holmes notes that the film was “critically acclaimed,” receiving not only Academy Awards, but also the NAACP Image Award and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Hubert Humphrey Civil Rights Award.

Holmes also remarks upon “much to criticize as well, including plot contrivances and witty dialogue that quickly wanes to redundant one-liners.” That goes along with my impression of the film, and I found the characters to be loaded caricatures and the race presentations highly manipulative, enough to walk away after 45 minutes. Holmes asserts that “the movie engages what audiences of nearly every racial and ethnic hue feel, in part because the joke is on all of us, but largely because the movie dares to express the prejudicial sentiments we harbor in our hearts.” Yes, and therein is the problem: Not that the movie really succeeds in doing so, but that it takes such relentless and self-important aim at doing so. The film strives to reveal our inner racism, labors so ponderously to expose prejudice across colors that, for all its sobriety and directness, one can’t take it seriously. Officer Ryan’s molestation of Christine is excruciating, but does the film have to focus at length on his fingers climbing her thighs?

Still, six more scholars in College English weigh in on the film. They form an example of intelligent academics spending time analyzing something that isn’t worth it. The appeal, of course, is the racial tension in the film, which can be taken as representing (or not representing) racial realities in our society. But when a work fails several aesthetic tests of plot, characters, etc., those drawbacks should outweigh the topicality.

Film is a seductive medium, however, and several smart friends have been taken in. Here are a few more bad films that have evoked their critical respect:

1. American Beauty (only good scene: the boy’s monologue while filming the bag blowing in the alley) 2. The Silence of the Lambs (all-time stupid moment: lady-agent fumbling in the darkness of killer’s lair, at his mercy, and she still manages to win) 3. L.A. Confidential (all-time stupid ending: angry cop and high-class prostitute leave L.A. for the suburbs to begin middle-class life) 4. Pulp Fiction (snappy guy-dialogue from scene to scene, a looping time frame for the plot, and lots of guns, and “the Gimp” may please the hipster 20-something sensibility, but these don’t add up to a good film)