Having seen Frost/Nixon and being mighty impressed by Michael Sheen’s portrayal of Frost (Langella is great too) I wanted to see other stuff he had done. I picked up a copy of Music Within the Hollywood style “true” story of disabilities activist Richard Pimentel. It is a serviceable Hollywood bio-pic, no great shakes but watchable. It rates an average 7.4 on IMDB which seems a little inflated though Sheen is again very good.
However I had a quick look at Ebert’s review and it struck me as very odd. He spends 3 paragraphs talking about what he likes about the movie concluding: *Taken just on these terms, the movie works, it’s effective, and I believe audiences will respond to it. *
He then spends 3 paragraphs telling us anecdotes about his experiences in a community where the disabled weren’t disadvantaged. Then he spends a paragraph talking about other campaigners for disabled rights who have nothing to do with the movie or Pimentel’s story.
He then marks down the movie begrudgingly giving it 2 and a half stars because: what it does, it does sincerely and fairly well. Just remember that its hero stands for countless others.
That seems like a really obtuse line of criticism for mine. I marked it down because it was about the guy that it was about.
Is this typical of his reviews because I must admit I have only seen a handful.
Ebert’s been slowing losing his mind for years. A lot of his reviews are like that. They focus on some strange tangential point to the movie as a whole and then ignores everything else about the movie.
Ebert doesn’t work for you. If you’re looking for a blander, more generic movie review rather than an article that makes some original points, which you may or may not agree are important, then you will be advised to read other reviewers instead. Because you are not Ebert’s employer, and he has only to satisfy himself with his review, and not you.
I applaud him for his independence, which he has earned many times over, and I enjoy reading his perspectives, even when I disagree with them. This is what he took from that movie–that it overstated the protagonist’s place in history–and that is what he chose to make the focus of his review. You may not like what he chose to write about. Which is fine. Because you are not Ebert’s boss. You’re a consumer, and if you don’t like his product, please consume some other product. Roger Ebert does not work for you.
Are you actually quibbling about the meaning of the word “review”? This is what Ebert does. If it’s not what you’re looking for in a movie review, look somewhere else. Who are you to say what Ebert’s review should be? It’s his review; he can make it about whatever he wants. Have you ever read literary movie reviews, like in the New Yorker or the New Republic? They are not primarily about whether a movie is worth seeing.
No, I don’t think it’s a very typical Ebert review. It may be the case that Ebert just isn’t for you (as pseudotriton has it), but I wouldn’t make that decision based on this review, because yes, it does go off topic more than is usual for the guy. Ebert does have his own style, though, and if you want to find out if he’s your guy, just read a couple more of his reviews of movies you’ve seen, either recent or archived (if I’m not mistaken his archives are available going all the way back to the late '60s).
(Be sure, though, to read his reviews of movies you’ve ALREADY seen, because, IMHO, he gives far too much information away. With Ebert, I always read his capsule review and look at the star rating before the movie, then read the full review afterwards for some insight and a different opinion. YMMV.)
You’re on half of the Death Pool lists, you’ve survived several writing partners, you’ve won writing awards aplenty, you’ve got something on your mind that you want to express–and you’re supposed to be sitting there fearful that some dweeb on the internet will think you’ve strayed a tad off-topic?
Ebert has gotten a little more rambling in recent years, and a little more political as well. That particular review, as compared to his entire body of work, I would say is atypical. He usually does stay focused on the movie.
I like his reviews, including the tangents he goes on. For example, this is his review of a movie called Mrs Henderson Presents, about a British woman of the 1930s who ran a theater that showed nude women (albeit very tastefully, not a burlesque show). He describes his trip to London in 1961 when he saw the show at this theater.
Almost off-topic, but my husband and I were among the 8 people who saw this in the theater when it was released, and thought it was wonderful! Michael Sheen deserved an Oscar nomination. He totally disappears into the role of a snarky, funny, irrverent, horny man with cerebral palsy. He couldn’t control his body, but his mind was sharp as a tack and three times smarter than anyone around him. Art Honeyman was described as a “foul-mouthed genius” and he certainly was. The movie may have been about Richard Pimentel, but the real reason to see it is for Michael Sheen’s delightful and profane Art Honeyman.
This is a movie that should be shown in every school. Not for what Pimental did, though that’s important and they should know about the bare-bones beginnings of the ADA, but because once they’ve been exposed to Art, they’ll probably think of cerebral palsy in an entirely new light and may help them see the person inside, rather than the body problems outside. I already knew it (it being that CP only affects the body, and not the mind) because I grew up with Karen/With Love From Karen as my favorite books, but for people who never have contact with someone with CP, it could be a revelation.
Roger Ebert is a film critic, one of three classes of people who write about cinema.
The OP is confusing him with a movie reviewer - a person who tells you if you’ll enjoy a particular film. Most of the people quoted on Rotten Tomatoes are movie reviewers. The other end of the spectrum is the dreaded cinéaste - a person who writes about everything other than the film in question. Jonathan Rosenbaum formerly of the Reader is a perfect example of the last.
Why are you taking such offense at this? I’m genuinely curious. I’m a big Ebert fan (have several of his books on the shelf right next to me) and it strikes me as a perfectly legitimate question. It is a somewhat atypical review. And the OP did not ask the question in a spiteful or mean-spirited way. So why the defensiveness and name-calling?
Because Ebert is not concerned wth your expectations, or mine, or those of any dweeb on the internet. He’s on the verge of death, and he has much larger concerns than pleasing any of us.
I find Ebert’s observations about stuff not movie related to be bland and pedestrian. The fact that he’s inserting them into a movie review don’t make the review or his observations interesting. The guy is a legend, and should hang it up, but I think in time I’ll see them sentimentally, like Schulz’s shaky unfunny ca. 1999 cartoons about Spike the beagle in the desert.
But nobody’s proposing bothering Ebert with these questions, so what does it matter whether he’s concerned with our expectations or not? We can still discuss what his revews are and what they are not without bothering him or being “dweebs.” And yes, he is very sick, but Ebert has always been a tough guy, and I imagine he’d welcome tough debate and criticism about his work, just as he invites it about the movies he reviews. Nevermind that this thread isn’t even being harsh on him (aside from the one post about him “slowly losing his mind,” which was IMHO uncalled for).
I find “he doesn’t give a damned if it’s any good” to be a poor rebuttal to “his work sucks.” The former may be a good explanation for the latter, though.
He’s actually not on the verge of death. He is cancer-free. Though surgeries to repair the complications that have rendered him unable to speak were unsuccessful, the removal of cancer cells and chemotherapy afterward were effective and he is not dying.
I’m no fan of Ebert; I think he’s a fucking idiot. But this, Justin, is actually the balderdash. There’s no formula for reviews; they’re simply an attempt to formulate a personal opinion. Some movie critics go into more depth about their opinions, including everything from historical context to technical details. Or whatever; it’s a personal opinion. Some people who write about movies write brief little capsules, focusing on their simple opinion of whether they’d recommend you see it or not. You should seek out THOSE reviewers if you want such reviews. It’s preposterous that you’d rather demand that another critic change his style to suit your needs. In the first place.
In the second place, Ebert is WAY closer to a simple capsule reviewer on that scale–isn’t “thumbs up/down” binary enough for you?–than a true “critic” (as opposed to “reviewer”) like Jonathan Rosenbaum or Andrew Sarris.
Not based on having read Ebert’s review of the movie the OP mentions, but just an observation: When a biopic is about someone with a disablilty, there’s often a subtext of advocacy in its presentation. Or even when there isn’t, people in the [insert disability here] “commmunity” may feel invited to ascribe an advocacy subtext to it.
In such circumstances, it doesn’t strike me as strange that a reviewer would devote some space to telling a potential viewer if it’s worth eleven bucks, and some more space to distancing himself from (or embracing) any advocacy subtext.