I used to like him. I used to enjoy his reviews, even when I didn’t agree with his opinions. But lately, he just is getting sloppy. Really sloppy.
He has been making many errors in his reviews. He doesn’t seem to care anymore. Maybe he’s just fed up with the stuff Hollywood is producing now, but that doesn’t mean he should be sloppy in his work.
I have seen many a time where he said so-and-so was in such and such film, and was that person never even had anything to with that film. One example that stands out (a bit old now) he said WWF’s “The Rock” played in “Gladiator” He was referring to the huge guy who helps Maximus escape prison, and gets shot full of arrows. Umm, Ebert, that was NOT The Rock!
Recently, in his review of Resident Evil, he made a lot of factual errors, simply because he didn’t research the original games any. Five or ten minutes with Google, Roger, would have helped you with your review, immensely.
I don’t need to cite a zillion of Ebert’s more recent faux pas, but I do think he has lost his touch. I read his reviews weekly. I have for years. I don’t know what is the cause for his late lack of research. Maybe he’s jaded. Who knows. I will speculate that things have not been the same since Siskel passed on.
It’s never been a matter of whether or not I agree, or disagree, with his reviews. I dont want him to tell me what he thinks I want to hear. Differing opinions are part of what makes reviews interesting. My beef is I just would like him to have his facts straight.
Has anyone else here been aware of Ebert’s recent sloppiness?
My newspaper runs Ebert reviews. Although he seems to have finally figured out how to spell Kevin Pollak’s name in his recent review of Stolen Summer, I can remember having to correct two reviews in which he rendered it as “Pollack.” And I think Kevin Pollak is a notable enough actor that it shouldn’t matter that his name is a little unusual.
As long as a reviewer accurately reports his or her reactions while watching a movie (or any work, for that matter), then any factual errors (such as misspelling or mis-stating an actor’s name) are trivial.
Of course, such errors lend some doubt as to whether the reviewer actually saw the movie. But at least you know they’re not cribbing from the press kit – or else they’d have all the spellings correct.
I agree that Ebert’s reviews have been kind of inexplicable lately – he hated Death to Smoochy, but really liked the excrecable (in my opinion) A Walk to Remember. I used to almost always trust his judgment, but he’s certainly entitled to his own opinion. Some of his BAD reviews are some of the funniest stuff I’ve read about film, too.
I don’t know if calling him on failure to research video games is a fair critique, though. He’s a movie critic, and getting on in years, at that! I’m not sure he’s got to know anything about the PlayStation to do his job. The movie ought to stand or fall on its own merits.
Ebert seems as good as ever. About the only think I think he’s been way off base on recently was Iris, because he loved Iris Murdock’s books and would have preferred a movie made from them.
As far as Resident Evil is concerned, if you have to look up things about it on Google, then the movie is a failure. Are filmgoers expected to have Google available to them when they watch the movie?
I agree. He does seem to be much worse than he used to be. He’s much less consistent and does make errors all the time in his reviews. Especially when it comes to quoting lines from movies–he ALWAYS gets them wrong. If you’re going to quote a line from a movie, at least get it right.
The only review I’ve absolutely, totally disagreed with him on is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
I thought it was a great movie. He didn’t. Fair enough.
He gave it zero stars.
Zero.
Zip.
Zilch.
It ties with Jaws 4: The Revenge and, apparently, makes it infinitely worse than Spice World.
The thing is that Ebert even said in his review that the movie wasn’t all that bad, it just doesn’t translate well from stage to screen. Well wonderful.
The one that has baffled me lately is him giving either 3 or 3.5 stars to “Tomb Raider.” I admit I’m harder on movies than most people, but Tomb Radier sucked, even for a supposedly stupid action movie. It went utterly beyond stupid, and the action scenes were horribly shot and edited. The one scene that the movie could have made its own - the gunfight on bungee cords - was a contender for the Oscar for “Most cuts in an action scene” with everything going so fast as to induce epilepsy. The result was a horrible mess that failed to be visually interesting or exciting.
Losing the action scenes, you’ve got nothing to go on except Angelina Jolie’s two-note take on the character (Am I sexy and determined in this scene or sexy and sad?) It was terribel, and I think it finally topped out at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ebert gives it at least 3 stars, calls it “A fun action movie.” Even my least discriminating friends found this film tedious, and I have pretty non-discriminating friends.
I think Ebert’s always been this way, or at least has been this way for years. Check out his review of In The Company of Men from several years ago. He mis-identifies the two male lead characters throughout.
And in his audio commentary for the Citizen Kane DVD, which I listened to last week, he consistently refers to Joseph Cotten’s character as Jebediah, not the correct Jedediah. That’s a minor error, of course, but for someone who claims to have seen the movie dozens of times you’d think it’s one he wouldn’t make.
The problem with Ebert is that he was allowed to pick his new TV co-host.
Ebert/Siskel knew that on a weekly basis they would have to meet with someone equally knowledgable about movies who may or may not share their opinion. Their debates were among equals and made them both better critics.
Anyone who saw the ‘guest hosts’ after Siskel’s death knows that Richard Roper was a coward’s choice. Ebert should have either quit,gone on alone or had the guts to pick someone who might
have challenged him. The loss of that ongoing debate not only killed the TV show,it’s hurt Ebert as a critic overall.
[By the by:wouldn’t Dick Roeper be a great porn star name?]
My biggest Ebert peeve is the consistently declining quality of his “Answer Man” features. He raraely even tries to answer anything anymore, and he uses it way too much to point out his recurring peeves (treatment of interracial couples, underlit movie screens, and the MPAA ratings) at the expense of entertaining or informing his audience. At his best he can translate “Cinema” for us regular movie goers; at his worst, he’s an inconsistent boor/bore.
Count me in as a big fan of Roger Ebert. He is one of the most intelligent film reviews currently working. Not only that, but you can tell how much he truly loves the cinema! I have to admit that the fact that he regularly put films into a political context appeals to me. I suspect that his left-wing viewpoint is a major reason I’m a fan of his.
As for those of you commenting on the recent quality of his work, I think it can be easily explained: Roger Ebert underwent surgery for cancer in February. Not many people are aware of this because he wrote enough reviews before his surgery that his column was unaffected. But I’m sure that the strain of his surgery and his recovery has kept him from working at “top speed”.