Am I missing something?

Rating: 6/10 (4 February 2002)

Oh, the glorious reviews that have gushed forth for "A Beautiful Mind". The IMDb user comments section is brimming with praise; people are calling this the best movie of the year. Heck, it even won the Golden Globe for Outstanding Dramatic Motion Picture.
Have these people seen "Memento"? Or "Moulin Rouge"? Or "The Royal Tenenbaums"? Why is "A Beautiful Mind", a fairly standard film, receiving all these accolades?
Unfortunately, I have the feeling that my thoughts on "A Beautiful Mind" are probably skewed from all the wonderful press and praise it received before I viewed it (sadly, the same thing happened with "Gladiator"). I was expecting some elegant masterpiece, but instead got a movie that, while it features good acting, is still a slave to Hollywood convention.
(insert spoilers warning here)
Okay, so we start off with John Nash at Princeton, and we have all the classic high school/ college elements -- the socially outcast main character, the bully with the chip on his shoulder who's got it in for the main character, the wisecracking-yet-all-knowing roommate, the stern authority figure, the problem that can't be solved but suddenly is given a solution thanks to an unrelated real world situation, etc. And it just went on from there. More convention on top of convention.
A lot of critics are praising this movie for being a good big budget film that came from a major studio. Since when do we grade possible Oscar contenders on a curve? Formula is formula, regardless of who's selling it. It's sad, too, because this could've been one of those "small treasures" kinds of movies, had the hype machine not gotten so squarely behind it.