Ebert's Most Hated

Every few years, I get a good laugh by re-reading this selection of zingers from Roger Ebert's most devastasting movie reviews.

My favourite is definitely this one: "This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." (It's for a comedy with an obscene name so, if you're curious, you'll have to read the article. Or at least skim it.)

But don't get me wrong, I also appreciate this one: "Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line". (This unfortunate film also won this unenviable accolade from him: "the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time".)

And then there's his verdict on the Spice Girls, the stars of Spice World: "What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names?"

Mind you, I don't agree with all his evaluations. The Dukes of Hazzard is one of my favourite films, although I seem to be alone in my enthusiasm for it. (Even the cast disparaged it.) Halloween III isn't one of my favourite horror films, but it's definitely in the second division (to a great extent on the strength of that incredibly creepy jingle that plays in a sinister advertisement, "Three more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween..")

I watched all the Resident Evil films that had been made up to 2018 over the Christmas of that year, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They're goofy, but fun. I saw Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo in the cinema and found it endearingly stupid. I laughed several times.

I thought The Village (and its twist) deserved much better than to be featured on this list, and The Usual Suspect is good by any standards.

Still, his put-downs are a hoot.

To find out what happened when Ebert ran into someone who'd been on the receiving end of one of these reviews-- probably the worst of them, in fact-- read here. It's both funny and heartwarming.