One of the worst Best Picture nominees in recent years, F1 is less a movie than a feature-length commercial meant to drum up American interest in Formula One racing. And even in this regard, it’s dishonest—a wild misrepresentation of the sport that features drivers intentionally crashing into one another without consequence, cars launching into the woods and bursting into flames, lady engineers banging their drivers after discussing aerodynamics, and more. It’s like calling a movie PGA, then showing Happy Gilmore. But I can begrudgingly tolerate sensationalism; what really rankles me about this production is its corporate complacency: even its cliches, which are many, function not to lower the bar for accessibility—their usual and understandable role (if not for an Oscar contender)—but to give the movie a fake reason for existing beyond the obvious one: absorbing sponsorship cash. While movies about rogue bad boys are always paradoxically the most predictable, rarely has the irony extended this unbearably into basic integrity: after spending two plus hours emblazoned with a dozen brand names, vrooming past signs for Qatar Airways, Brad Pitt concludes with the line: “It’s not about the money.” The driver doth protest too much.
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