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If you’re a film buff or just someone that cares about the annual Oscar race, you’ll be familiar with the 94th Academy Award Best Picture Winner CODA. In fact, this was originally meant to be an article about the reaction to CODA winning best picture, but I felt that was a little reductive to reduce a film to a study on internet outrage, so I decided to settle on doing a normal review instead, just with a little more commentary on the Oscars thing.

For those that don’t (or you just haven’t seen the movie) CODA is a coming-of-age film released in 2021 about Ruby – a child of deaf adults (hence the name) who loves music and wants to sing, though her wishes sometimes come at odds with her family’s interests. It was received well upon its release, with most critics touting it as a simple but sweet story that respected the group that the store centers on.

The general consensus was that people liked it well enough, though it wasn’t some earth-shattering paradigm-shift for cinema. Therefore, when Oscar night rolled around and CODA ended up taking home the Oscar for Best Picture, the victory came as a bit of a shock to some, particularly those who didn’t feel that the movie was quite Oscar caliber. I definitely was not expecting this movie to win, but the competition that year was admittedly weak – Dune, Power of the Dog, and Don’t Look Up were the stronger nominees, and even then I’m not sure they were all that much better or memorable than CODA. The only other nominee that I thought was a genuine masterpiece was Drive My Car, and even then I fully acknowledge that it’s not a movie for the mainstream crowd to enjoy, falling into the sort of niche crevices for arthouse audiences.

Having finally watched the movie in 2023 now when nobody cares about it anymore, I’ll first give my thoughts on this movie before diving into its merits as a Best Picture winner.

To give my thoughts on the movie first – I found it to be just alright. At parts it really feels only a step above Glee or a DCOM, especially with its chosen narrative techniques, musical montages, and characters with the depth of a kiddie pool. I’m not denying that there was heart put into the movie with its respectful portrayal of deaf people – especially seeing how the movie actually hired deaf actors – but heart is all this movie really has going for it.

Don’t get me wrong – the movie is competently made, but there is nothing innovative here. That being said, I understand and respect that innovation is not what the movie was striving for. What it was striving for was representation, which makes the movie’s choice to focus the narrative on Ruby – the only hearing person in her family – rather strange. The movie uses her perspective and her struggles to understand her deaf family, which feels rather counterintuitive to the film’s main goal. This choice could be justified if Ruby’s story and central struggle was a complex and nuanced one that has some universal applicability, but every beat in her story feels like a more realistic, less campy High School Musical. Her romance with Miles, who I can only describe as a guy, also rings equally hollow.

Perhaps a better movie would be the focus the narrative on the day Frank and Leo were trying to get through their evaluation without their usual interpreter – Ruby. That might’ve formed a more compelling and focused narrative.

CODA is ultimately an inoffensive crowd-pleaser that will likely fade into the waves of time like many other forgotten past Oscar winners (The Artist (2011) and Out of Africa (1985) comes to mind – bet you didn’t remember those) – I have so little to say about this movie’s merits that this is one of the shortest think-pieces on film that you will see me write. And yet, it’s really not that surprising of an Oscar winner: Sure, it might not fit into the typical Oscar bait template of dour historical/war epics with big budgets, but it’s enjoyable enough for the casual movie-going crowd and is centered on a marginalized group a la Moonlight and Green Book.

It is by no means as controversial of a win as Green Book, Crash, or Shakespeare in Love, which I will definitely talk about sometime later. I prefer to think of its win as an ode and recognition of the struggle to get this movie made, which you can read about here, and if its win opens up opportunities for deaf actors and more compelling stories about disabilities in the future, its victory is a worthwhile one even if I don’t personally care for it.