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What Movies Did You Agree/Disagree with Roger Ebert?

posted 10 years ago by goldenskies
39 replies | jump to latest

I remember reading his review of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and he was not entirely thrilled. He didn't like Steve Martin's character, he hated the music, he had a lot of complaints. Since I liked the movie, it really stuck in my mind. Years later, I went back to read his review and he had changed it. Now it was a holiday favorite, no music complaints, etc. I always wondered if he read it later and found it too harsh or if, after it become so popular, he thought his review looked incorrect.

Still, I liked Roger Ebert and on his recommendation I went to see Made in America. One of the worst movies ever IMO. It starred Whoopie Goldberg and Ted Danson and talk about a lot of obnoxious overacting with these two. Ted Danson was completely over the top and wearing cowboy boots, it was just dumb. I could not understand what Ebert liked about the movie, it was just really bad.

After that, I hesitated to blindly go to the movies he recommended but I often was struck by how well written his reviews were. He was good at cutting to the core of a character, such as Sideways, where his first observation is Paul Giamatti plays an alcoholic. I wanted to give Paul Giamatti's character more credit, but in reality, Ebert was right.

I read that Ebert taught some film classes; I would have loved to have attended or even seen him lecture. I bet they were interesting.

[–] fete_accompli 9 years ago

Not too sure about BATMAN. Two stars.

There was very little sound from the man except for a continual series of moans. - Charles Bukowski

[–] nocomputer1962 8 years ago

I think Ebert always liked Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Could the op be confusing Ebert with Leonard Maltin?

[–] TopFrog 7 years ago

There are a few types of movies, well mentioned in the other posts here, where Ebert tended to go wrong in his reviews:

1. He tended to overrate movies where he thought people should go see them for educational purposes, especially regarding race relations. The OP mentions Made in America (unseen by me), and someone else cites Do the Right Thing (which I think is fantastic). Another for me is Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, which Ebert gave three stars, even though much of it is abysmal (but there are some brilliant moments here and there). I don't know if his pushing movies for this reason was deliberate on his part, but it's clear to me that it biased his reviews.

2. He tended to pan movies that depicted fascism where there wasn't an overt condemnation of it. Clockwork Orange and Fight Club are good examples. He seemed to feel that these sort of films glorified violence and might lead to imitation.

3. Ebert also panned movies sometimes just because he felt that the actors were being exploited. Blue Velvet is a prime example of this, and I can't really disagree with him about how Lynch handled Isabella Rossellini, though I think that the end result is a solid (albeit disturbing) work. Another example is Fast Times at Ridgemont High -- I don't think that Jennifer Jason Leigh was exploited or mistreated in this, but I also don't think that the film has aged well (and the comic timing seems off a good deal of the time).

[–] nocomputer1962 7 years ago

Good points. To my recollection, Ebert never gave a bad review to a film about interracial dating. (Made in America? The Bodyguard???) He also was easy prey for films about drug or alcohol addiction, being perhaps the only person in America who liked the infamous James Woods/Sean Young film The Boost. As for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I don't think Ebert understood that we were supposed to feel bad about the exploitation of Jennifer Jason Leigh's character. When she finally gives the dorky guy a chance at the end of the movie, we should be glad that her days of being exploited will be over. I still like Fast Times, but wish Crowe and Heckerling would tweak the soundtrack to make it less 80s-ish.

[–] SemiAnimus (816) 4 months ago

There's two that immediately came to mind.

I absolutely disagreed with Ebert for giving Freddy Got Fingered a terrible review and the lowest rating possible. Freddy Got Fingered is pretty much the funniest movie ever made and there's no way it deserved the score it got. Roger Ebert was unable to let go of his pretenses here and couldn't appreciate that movie.

Another film I disagree with Ebert on is The Good Son. I remember in that review he bombed the movie and claimed something like that it was basically exploitative and for shock value so it was therefore was terrible. It was exploitative for sure, but that didn't make it bad. Watching the little kid from Home Alone and 10 year old Elijah Woods do things like shoot dogs with home made, bolt firing crossbows, throw dummies off of bridges to cause traffic accidents and all of the other shit in that movie, in a mainstream film that was shown in theatres no less, is so shocking and exploitative that it's as subversive as something like a John Waters movie. It wasn't a great movie by any means, but it didn't deserve a bottom score either.

Ebert seemed unable to able to appreciate contextual subtexts, like subversion of ideas, if they wandered too far from his scale of what was appropriate.