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Terms of Endearment

(Best Picture, 1983)

What Should Have Won: The Right Stuff.

"The Official Story": "Everyone loves the tear jerker..."

What We Think Happened:  It may be saying something, when I tell you that Terms of Endearment is often considered by men and women alike, for better or for worse, as the goliath of all chick flicks. If one chick flick left a man with less, this left him with the least. If one chick flick was depressing, this was downright manic depressive. If all chick flicks have a sappy death scene, this one had the dying person stay alive just long enough so everyone they ever knew in their entire life could come say goodbye before they croaked.

Now before the "spoiler police" get their panties in a bunch at the cryptic "spoiler" I offered above, save it. Films like these do not have spoilers. Watch one season of any soap opera in the history of drama. Consider yourself "spoiled." There is nothing I could say about this movie without "spoiling" it for anyone who has heard the same soap plot time and time again.

Ladies who like a good cry will tell you that this is a "good cry." But sad stories are only worth telling when there is a point. You need empathy for the characters before anyone truly cares what happens to them. If one of these women did something with their lives besides whine, we would care what happens to them. If all they do is bitch, it's a different story. These women are so boring and into themselves, you'd swear they were about to write a whole soliloquy about taking a crap. You wish for them to just shut up, and when that doesn't happen, you wish they just die. When one of them does, men in the audience are not crying; they are sharing high fives. This isn't good.

It's interesting to note that a large part of this list of Worst Best Picture Winners is made up of films that were actually pretty good, but not "Best." In this case, I wouldn't be surprised to learn this got into the Oscar ballot because someone was either stoned, high, drunk, or perhaps, dead, with someone looking at the body and thinking, "He's using charades! Corpse...? Boring movie? A tragedy? Ah-ha! It's a tragedy it was ever made...? Terms of Endearment!"

What Makes It So Embarrassing "Today":  It has been said that Carol Burnett once described labor pains like this: grab your bottom lip, and then pull it very hard...over your face. For 23 years, there has been one similar pain for every husband; to be forced to watch this film with his wife. Seriously.

This List Ends With: The Biggest FAD In Film History!

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