As the Academy and its guests gather Sunday to enthusiastically slap congratulatory-calloused backs at the Oscars, an altogether different condition will overtake multiplexes nationwide. There, audiences will be confronted by a one-joke hippie comedy with Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston ( Wanderlust ), an Amanda Seyfried thriller withheld from critics before opening day ( Gone ), the Navy SEAL recruitment effort ( Act of Valor ), and frequent Oscar week performer Tyler Perry, departing from his matriarch Madea for a change ( Good Deeds ). 

 Such a weak field is hardly an anomaly; the first months on the calendar historically are the wasteland of the release schedule, sitting in sharp contrast to the Academy’s annual celebration of cinematic “greatness.” A curious paradox is normally in play — at the time Hollywood crows about its best, it often serves up some of its worst. To gauge this phenomenon — and display the movie industry’s staggering self-unawareness — here is a look back at what has been foisted on the public during the last 20 years of Academy Awards weekends: