Movies Ebert and Roeper hated that you loved.......

Cafe Society
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As I was shopping for DVDs the other day, I bought a copy of “Waking up in Reno” with Billy Bob Thornton and Patrick Swayze. I read the reviews that really panned this movie as horrible.

I watched it and laughed my ass off for about an hour. This movie is about rednecks and the movie totally reflected it. Billy Bob was hilarious here (I bet he’s a jerkoff in real life).

Another movie panned that to me is a classic is “Mouse Hunt” with Nathan Lane. It is a top 10 favorite. I really enjoy reading reviews after I see the movie. Where I live I can buy bootlegs for a dollar.

Kangaroo Jack was horrible (but Jack was cool).

SP

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I really liked Mouse Hunt, too. Great cinematography, great slapstick, a charming homage to Oliver Hardy, and one of the oddest appearances by Christopher Walken in a career filled with oddball parts.

My nomination is The Frighteners, directed by pre-LOTR Peter Jackson and starring Michael J. Fox. My jaw dropped when I read Ebert’s 1 star slag-fest of a review and I couldn’t believe that we had seen the same movie. I thought it was a very well directed, hilarious, fast-paced horror/mystery/comedy with great special effects. Michael J. Fox turned in a surprisingly touching performance, Jeffery Combs was laugh-out-loud funny as a paranormal investigator with “issues”, and Trini Alvarado was very sympathetic and stunningly attractive, as well.

Ebert, on the other had, found it loud, frenetic and empty. It’s one of the very few times that a movie review has actively pissed me off.

3

Ebert hated ‘Gladiator’ but even worse, he gave ‘usual suspects’ a very lukewarm review. Otherwise he is a pretty spot-on guy. His ‘Freddy got fingered’ review deserves to be in a hall of fame somewhere

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Well, I didn’t “love” ID4, but I liked it a helluva lot better than Ebert (and, at the time, Siskel).

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The Frighteners was a great movie, so I agree that Ebert was way off.

In his book, I hate, hate, hated this movie, he mentions how much he hated Dead Poet’s Society, but I like that movie.

Roeper hated Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. This is the only time he’s made me fuming mad. He was wayyyyyyyyyyyyy off on his review of this. It really sounded like he was predispositioned against it the whole time. Oddly enough, he liked The Two Towers

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Roper’s made pretty clear that he had never read any of the books

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And Ebert made it clear that he hadn’t read the books in decades and based his reviews on a flawed memory.

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Regarding the OP, Siskel and Ebert both hated Return To Oz, a movie I love. What was frustrating was that they looked at the movie as if it were a sequel to the MOVIE The Wizard of Oz, and judged it in a “how dare they try to better a classic” kind of way. They also didn’t like the fact that it was dark, moody and scary. Return To Oz is based on the books by L. Frank Baum, and is a heck of a lot closer to Baum’s vision than the 1939 movie was.

Reviewers (not just Siskel & Ebert) killed that movie, and they killed Walter Murch’s directing career, which started off brilliantly. The horribly sad thing is that they killed it because of a stupid misplaced nostalgia, and a misunderstanding of Baum, and an ignorance of just how dark most classic children’s stories are.

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The two biggies that stand out to me are his reviews of Erik the Viking and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, both of which he gave zero stars. Now, I guess Erik just rubbed him the wrong way or something, but for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he talks about how much he liked the play. The movie’s got exactly the same words as the play! Surely, even if he felt that the direction and acting were both completely abyssmal, the script alone ought to be worth at least one star!

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Well, I had a whole long, well thought-out post with links and stuff that the hamsters ate a few hours ago, and rather than follow them around for a few days (or however long it takes hamsters to digest and excrete Ebert related material), I’ll just briefly sum up my profound thoughts. BTW, if you want to check any of the reviews:

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebertser.html

Re: Dead Poet’s Society, I have to admit I’m really surprised he gave it such a bashing. I mean I agree with much of what he said about it, but I guess the main difference is that I liked it.

As to the OP, my first thought is of Blue Velvet which he gave not one but two 1-star reviews. Again I agree with many of his points, yet where he sees these points amounting to crap, I see an early stage of Lynch with some very powerful scenes and occassional sparks of brilliance. I don’t necessarily love the movie, but to give it only a single star seems like a slap in the face.

Another is Raising Arizona which I do love. He seemed to simply not “get it”, criticisizing most of what I thought made the film so original.

Now, despite this I should mention that I am basically an Ebert “fan”. I do read his reviews often and find myself agreeing with more than I disgree with, and even the reviews that I disagree with in general I still often find some enlightening points embedded within.

But, after reading his review of XXX with the new hotshot in town, Vin Diesel, I find myself feeling like what I imagine young christian Beatles fans felt when John Lennon said they were bigger than Christ, or that feeling you get when you’re in a romantic relationship for years and for some strange reason you wake up one day in a full blown identity crises wondering who this person lying next to you is. OK, yes, I’m being way too melodramatic here, but you get the point.

I had watched that movie amazed at how bad a movie could be. (oh, BTW, I realize this is kinda contrary to the OP so sorry for the hijack) The dialogue was so ridiculus and the plot so incredibly stupid. OK, the stunts, though incredibly stupid, did actually look real and so if you want to see stunts, they were indeed well done. But I think for a movie based on stunts to work, I’d like to at least see charismatic characters who I care about doing them. I could certainly see the comparison to a modern day Bond flick that many have made, but the Bond character has an undeniable charisma. Vin Diesel, however, I found uninteresting, and just plain unlikeable in every way.

ummm… I honestly wasn’t planning on coming in here to rant, and I’m not quite sure how exactly it happened, but if you want to see the 3-and-a-half star review:

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2002/08/080905.html

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His review pisses me off for more reasons than that. I know a lot of people who haven’t read the books and who also loved the movies.

His problem is that he wanted to trivialize the movie down to a point where it sounded(according to him) like it was some action thriller, with stellar special effects, but with no intelligence or artistic merit. His predisposition is that it was like the “Dungeons and Dragons” movie.

His one wish for the Academy Awards that year was that it would lose every category so that “quality films, not flashy movies” would be recognized.

Other than this one review, I think Roeper is a pretty good review. He was just wayyyyyyyyyy off here.

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If you ever wanna laugh at Ebert, go watch the film that he wrote the script for. You’ll find it tough to take the fat man seriously after watching Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

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I saw The Frighteners and loved it. I was amazed to see his review panning it. Then I saw it again.
I’ve recently heard it’s not just me. Many many people will tell you this, and so will I. Do NOT see it twice. It’s good once, then it seems dumb. I don’t know how or why, but it just is. I guess Ebert got the second time experience the first time around.
I’m most disturbed by how many stars he gave Phantom Menace. I believe it was 3 and a half.

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He also co-wrote Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens

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I think it’s very easy to take him seriously. He’s seen several thousand films, he’s written hundreds of reviews, he’s written several books about films, and he’s written a screenplay and has seen it produced. That means that he’s very familiar with the workings of how a movie gets made, from script to screen. No one can say to him “well, you think it’s so easy? You try it!” because he did. People who point out BTVOFD don’t seem to get that. Then, they’re also the ones who call him “fat” when a) it has nothing to do with anything concerning his taste in movies and b) he’s lost so much weight in the past several years that he’s near normal size (normal unless stringbean is your yardstick).

In other words, :rolleyes:

I disagree with him sometimes, but he knows and loves movies, and if he has a blind spot every now and then (for a movie he either likes or dislikes), well, don’t we all? He frustrates me sometimes, especially wrt LOTR. I hope he comes to his senses this December and either re-reads the damn books, or forgets them and judges the movie on its own. Still, I wouldn’t ahve known about some of my favorite films if not for him, and I thank him.

I know one thing for sure. If he gives a movie 4 stars, I’m there, opening day if possible, because I know that I will almost certainly love it.

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I love the fact that Ebert wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It’s part of what makes him my favorite critic. Far from the stereotype of the Europhile elitist film critic, Ebert can appreciate a movie that deliberatly aims to be low-brow, and can even prefer it over a movie that attempts to be something more and fails.

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That is a very good review imho. For the record, I don’t agree with it and think Blue Velvet is a modern classic. Ebert however does go to great lengths to explain why he only gave it 1 star which is better than just saying “It sucks, avoid at all costs”.

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Ebert gave one of my favorite movies his rare 0 star rating - ‘The Hitcher’. The thing is, the review seems like he didn’t think the movie was badly made or anything, he was just disturbed by the violence and the un-happy ending.

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In my opinion:

Roeper is pretty much the people’s critic. He’s the guy who doesn’t really KNOW shit. So he reviews movies the way an average dumb American would.

He’s pretty much an idiot.
Ebert… a little bit better… when he’s clicking… he clicks… but he’s off as much as he is on.

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He did the commentary track on the 60th anniversary edition of Citizen Kane, and his love of that movie really shows through. I love how he really gets into the movie and that makes the commentary interesting.

There are times when I don’t agree with him and think, “What are you thinking?” (i.e. his review for XXX), but for the most part I really like his reviews. Like Miller said, Ebert isn’t some stuck up snob like a lot of critics are, and that’s why I like him.