That’s my two-cents mini review of Crash over at Netflix. Another Netflix customer used the term “emotional masturbation” to describe it. I know people love this movie, but I like it less and less the more I think about it. Here are a few choice bits from negative reviews that sum up why I think this is the most overrated movie of the year :

NY Times :

So what kind of a movie is “Crash”? A frustrating movie: full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb.

Boston Globe :

[I]ts characters come straight from the assembly line of screenwriting archetypes, and too often they act in ways that archetypes, rather than human beings, do…while Haggis thinks he’s exploding racial clichés, he’s really just rearranging ones we already live with.

Mixed Reviews :

…underscoring the fact, lest we forget, that this is an Art Film, which is necessary in order to counteract tubthumping, obvious, ponderous lines such as the one the great Don Cheadle is forced to utter in the opening of the film, “In L.A., nobody touches you…I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”

Miami Herald :

Contrived, obvious and overstated, Crash is basically just one white man’s righteous attempt to make other white people feel as if they’ve confronted the problem of racism head-on. The movie is a gross oversimplification of a serious issue that exploits every stereotype imaginable, cramming them all into a plot that moves from one white-knuckle scenario to the next with an almost disgusting self-importance.

In an earlier post, I referred to Crash as a “poor man’s Magnolia“. About two-thirds of the way through the film, I leaned over to my wife and whispered “I’m just waiting for frogs to fall from the sky”. Ten minutes later, out of nowhere, it started snowing in the film. Needless to say, I haven’t laughed this hard at a film’s ending since Volcano.