ATROCIOUS! The worst movie ever to win 'Best Picture'

Rating: 1/10 (21 September 2004)

At the time this movie came out, my parents and aunt - an English college teacher - invited me to see it with them. They told me that since it was written by a Canadian that that alone made it great. Suspicious of wartime romance movies, I declined. After its release on video I decided to give it a try. An hour into it I knew why I had skipped this awful, stereotypical movie. I could not subject myself to 2 more hours of unnnnngggghhhhh!
'The English Patient' is nothing more than an overrated, formula-using wartime romance with a pace that more resembles geological time scales than human. The plot itself - battle-injured soldier develops romance with nurse - is a cliché-ridden, often-used formula. Admittedly, there are some deviations from this - the man's terminal injuries, the additional characters of the young Sikh and the thief, but they are not enough to save this long-drawn-out, thoroughly DULL film. Nor is the photography, which so many people and critics laud as contributing to this film's misplaced 'masterpiece' status. To be fair, some of the scenery is marvelous but again it is not enough to justify 3 hours.
Avoid this piece of junk at all costs. It just isn't worth it if you value your patience (pun not intended). There are times when I wonder what the people at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences were thinking when they gave this awful film the Best Picture nod.