# Factual errors that Roger Ebert has made **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 10, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885 "2005-07-10T21:11:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Rufus\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/41 "2005-07-11T16:11:54Z")
> [@Nonsuch](#): > > Ebert’s [original review](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831209/REVIEWS/312090302/1023) of _Yentl_ gave it three and a half stars. > > Is it possible you’re misremembering the original _Siskel & Ebert_ program, or confusing it with one of the rip-offs (Jeff Lyons and Michael Medved perhaps)? Tuckerfan was clearly referring to their review of _Yent **i** l_, which may be an entirely different movie. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/42 "2005-07-11T16:18:41Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > This is wrong. While yes, most of my review of the review is a rant that is a factual mistake about the movie. Just like the OP was asking for. And the timer bit. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/43 "2005-07-11T18:15:25Z")
> [@Nonsuch](#): > > Ebert’s [original review](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831209/REVIEWS/312090302/1023) of _Yentl_ gave it three and a half stars. > > Is it possible you’re misremembering the original _Siskel & Ebert_ program, or confusing it with one of the rip-offs (Jeff Lyons and Michael Medved perhaps)? Not possible that I’m misremembering the program or have it confused, since I rarely watched the Jeff Lyons show, and shortly after the program originally aired, I found out that one of my dad’s employees at the time was a big Babs fan, and I proceeded to use the comments that Siskel & Ebert made on the show to rag on him about it. That’s Ebert’s newspaper column review of the film that you’ve linked to, and not anything doing with his show, and I’ve noticed that there’s been some differences between his comments on the shows and his newspaper column. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since it’s quite possible that he figures there’s a different demographic for each, so he probably structures the comments differently for each one. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/44 "2005-07-11T18:52:21Z")
See [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=176163) - a thread I started about some errors he made during his review for **Ronin**. There’s some others mentioned in there. ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/45 "2005-07-11T19:15:22Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > That’s Ebert’s newspaper column review of the film that you’ve linked to, and not anything doing with his show, and I’ve noticed that there’s been some differences between his comments on the shows and his newspaper column. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since it’s quite possible that he figures there’s a different demographic for each, so he probably structures the comments differently for each one. True, but I’ve never heard of him panning a movie on the show while raving about it in the column, or vice versa. In his written review, he does take on the issue of Streisand’s age, and in a way that could seem unflattering to a casual reader: he admits it’s somewhat ridiculous that Streisand would attempt to play a 17-year-old, yet his review was actually admiring of her _chutzpah_. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/46 "2005-07-11T20:19:27Z")
Roger obviously doesn’t speak German either. He constantly refers to the film as “Das Boot” pronounced like the English word for cowboy footwear. In German, it is pronounced exactly the same as “Boat” in English, just spelled differently. Same with names of German actors and other films. This is not a big deal and I don’t expect reviewers to speak 20 languages, but Roger seems to massacre the German language worse than anyone else I have heard on television. Maybe he is equally bad in French and Italian. Still - I like Roger. Now maybe someone can explain how so-called-film-critic Gene Shalit stays on the air with his one sentence, nonsensical snippets that have nothing whatsoever to do with the film he is supposedly reviewing. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/47 "2005-07-11T20:36:59Z")
I’ve read Ebert’s reviews regularly for years, and I have noticed occasional misquotes or factual errors–moreso than I’d expect from someone in his position, really. But if you think about it, he reviews up to five films every week, and probably sees even more. If I saw and wrote about that many movies every week, I’d misremember a few things, too. There’s also no one to fact-check for him, since he is one of few who have seen the movie by the time it comes out. It’s also easy to change details around when you roll something over and over in your head, as a good movie critic will. So I don’t worry much about it. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/48 "2005-07-11T20:41:25Z")
> [@Nonsuch](#): > > True, but I’ve never heard of him panning a movie on the show while raving about it in the column, or vice versa. In his written review, he does take on the issue of Streisand’s age, and in a way that could seem unflattering to a casual reader: he admits it’s somewhat ridiculous that Streisand would attempt to play a 17-year-old, yet his review was actually admiring of her _chutzpah_. Well, unless someone’s able to turn up a videotape of the show, or a transcript of it, we’ll never know for sure. ---
**Author:** ![Cemetery\_Savior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Cemetery\_Savior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cemetery_Savior)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/49 "2005-07-11T20:50:09Z")
> [@Scott Plaid](#): > > Ok, I’ll stop with the “jokes”, now.[/SIZE] Truer (and more confusing) quote marks have never been typed. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/50 "2005-07-11T21:59:43Z")
[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19941014/REVIEWS/410140301/1023](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19941014/REVIEWS/410140301/1023) > [@](#): > > is a scene in “Exit to Eden” in which the hero butters Dana Delany’s breast, sprinkles it with cinnamon, and licks it before taking bites from a croissant. I’m thinking: The breast or the croissant, make up your mind. Wrong. Hero hands Dana the croissant and exposes her breast. He butters the croissant, then her breast. He sprinkles cinammon on the croissant, then her breast. She eats the croissant while he licks her breast. His mouth never comes into contact with the croissant. Some will say that this is a minor detail. I say a scene involving Dana Delaney’s breast really sticks in your memory. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/51 "2005-07-11T23:48:45Z")
To be honest my comment was not based on a general memory of various Ebert threads and discussions, and I can’t at present defend my claim that he **frequently** fails to watch the entire movie, because given the number of movies he watches I’d have to come up with dozens of examples for that to be literally true. I managed to find a couple in a few minutes of relatively disinterested searching, in “Fargo” and “Saving Private Ryan” but I’m not even sure the “Fargo” error is because he didn’t watch the movie (he misunderstood the complex nature of the hapless Jerry Lundegaard’s scams.) ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/52 "2005-07-12T01:32:39Z")
What? The idea that he finds women sexy? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/53 "2005-07-12T04:15:58Z")
I seem to remember someone complaining about him making a major mistake in his review for **The Italian Job** (the remake), something about the weight of a safe. Haven’t seen it so I can’t really comment. I will say that I enjoy most of his reviews so much and they are quite detailed and insightful, I’ll forgive him a mistake or two once in a while. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/54 "2005-07-12T04:47:04Z")
> [@Cat Fight](#): > > I seem to remember someone complaining about him making a major mistake in his review for **The Italian Job** (the remake), something about the weight of a safe. Haven’t seen it so I can’t really comment. I will say that I enjoy most of his reviews so much and they are quite detailed and insightful, I’ll forgive him a mistake or two once in a while. Ebert allegedly missed a rather important and un-missiable-unless-you’re-not-watching plot twist with respect to how the loot was spirited away, which I won’t repeat here as it’s a spoiler. However, if in fact he did make this error in his review, it’s been revised for the review on his Web site. ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/55 "2005-07-12T19:37:28Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > Roger obviously doesn’t speak German either. > > He constantly refers to the film as “Das Boot” pronounced like the English word for cowboy footwear. In German, it is pronounced exactly the same as “Boat” in English, just spelled differently. Really? I’ve never heard even one person pronounce it any other way than “Das Boot”. I’m not debating whether your assertion about the German pronunciation is correct; I’m just saying that nobody **ever** says it that way. That being said, Ebert does sometimes get some details wrong in his reviews, but he is generally willing to admit it openly when he’s made an error and someone points it out. While in a lot of cases I don’t agree with his opinion of a movie, he is one of the few film reviewers out there who actually has a lot of knowledge about film. When you see as many movies per year as he has done every year for the past four decades, you’re bound to learn a lot and lose a few details at the same time. Hell, with crap like _Resident Evil_, he’s lucky (or maybe not) if he remembers the basic plot five minutes after he leaves the theater. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/56 "2005-07-12T20:50:38Z")
> [@cbawlmer](#): > > Really? I’ve never heard even one person pronounce it any other way than “Das Boot”. I’m not debating whether your assertion about the German pronunciation is correct; I’m just saying that nobody **ever** says it that way. FWIW, I say it that way, and I don’t speak German. It’s just that I heard some time ago that this is the correct pronunciation, so that’s what I go with. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/57 "2005-07-12T20:54:07Z")
> [@Jeff Lichtman](#): > > FWIW, I say it that way. . . I just realized what I said was ambiguous. I mean that I pronounce the word “Boot” in the title like the English word “boat.” ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/58 "2005-07-12T21:15:35Z")
I caught him redhanded! Take a look at the review for [The Italian Job](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030530/REVIEWS/305300302/1023). The second paragraph says: > [@](#): > > F. Gary Gray’s “The Italian Job,” on the other hand, is nothing more, or less, than a slick caper movie with stupendous chase scenes and a truly ingenious way to steal $35 million in gold bars from a safe in a Venetian palazzo. The safe is stolen by a gang led by Donald Sutherland, who must be relieved to note that Venice has no dwarfs in red raincoats this season. Nothing wrong there. But what happens if we go back in time and read the [original version of the review](http://web.archive.org/web/20030604092930/suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-italian30f.html), published in June of 2003? > [@](#): > > F. Gary Gray’s “The Italian Job,” on the other hand, is nothing more, or less, than a slick caper movie with stupendous chase scenes and a truly ingenious way to steal $35 million in gold bars from a safe in a Venetian palazzo. **That the weight of the safe would probably sink the getaway boat is beside the point; he who brings logic to this picture is on a fool’s mission.** > > The safe is stolen by a gang led by Donald Sutherland, who must be relieved to note that Venice has no dwarfs in red raincoats this season. The bolded sentence is a severe factual error. Spoiler for those who haven’t seen it: The getaway boat was a diversion. The safe sinks to the bottom of the canal where it is cracked by scuba-diving safecrackers. Not that this is any more plausible, but there ya go. So it seems Ebert has engaged in some reviewer revisionism. For shame. I’m sure other long-since corrected errors could be dug up with this method, but I do not have the patience. I generally like Ebert, though I do notice a lot of errors in his stuff. (Especially since I tend to read reviews _after_ I see a film.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@The\_Hook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hook)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/59 "2005-07-12T21:30:36Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > He constantly refers to the film as “Das Boot” pronounced like the English word for cowboy footwear. In German, it is pronounced exactly the same as “Boat” in English, just spelled differently. Same with names of German actors and other films. This is not a big deal and I don’t expect reviewers to speak 20 languages, but Roger seems to massacre the German language worse than anyone else I have heard on television. Maybe he is equally bad in French and Italian. Ok, I realize this is Russian, but I recently heard him pronounce Potemkin for the first time. I’ve never heard anyone say Potemkin in the past and I always assumed you stressed the “Po” as in Pokemon. Ebert stresses the “tem”. Can anyone tell me what the correct pronounciation is? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885/60 "2005-07-13T01:25:53Z")
> [@The Hook](#): > > Ok, I realize this is Russian, but I recently heard him pronounce Potemkin for the first time. I’ve never heard anyone say Potemkin in the past and I always assumed you stressed the “Po” as in Pokemon. Ebert stresses the “tem”. Can anyone tell me what the correct pronounciation is? I don’t know Russian pronunciation. Po-TEM-kin is the standard Anglicised pronunciation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/factual-errors-that-roger-ebert-has-made/311885.md?page=4)