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Roger Ebert

241 quotes

“I did not walk into the screening with a light step and a heart that sang. For that matter, I did not walk out afterward with my spirits renewed. But this movie is nowhere near as bad as it might have been, and probably is the best possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (30 Mar 1990)
“To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (25 May 1990)
“This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think. Movies like Top Gun are hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in Firefox. But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Top Gun (16 May 1986)
“You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Twister (10 May 1996)
“I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball?”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Angels in the Outfield (15 July 1994)
“Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Break-Up (2 June 2006)
“We'll probably be debating A Clockwork Orange for a long time — a long, weary and pointless time. The New York critical establishment has guaranteed that for us. They missed the boat on 2001, so maybe they were trying to catch up with Kubrick on this one. Or maybe the news weeklies just needed a good movie cover story for Christmas.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of A Clockwork Orange (11 February 1972)
“When the film premiered at Cannes 2003, Lars von Trier was accused of not portraying Americans accurately, but how many movies do? Anything by David Spade come to mind? Von Trier could justifiably make a fantasy about America, even an anti-American fantasy, and produce a good film, but here he approaches the ideological subtlety of a raving prophet on a street corner.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Dogville (9 April 2004)
“The audience I joined was perhaps 80 percent female. I heard some sniffles and glimpsed some tears, and no wonder. Eat Pray Love is shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue, and it mercifully reverses the life chronology of many people, which is Love Pray Eat.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Eat Pray Love (11 Aug 2010)
“I know that the real Brockovich liked to dress provocatively; that's her personal style and she's welcome to it. But the Hollywood version makes her look like a miniskirted hooker, with bras that peek cheerfully above her necklines.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Erin Brockovich (17 March 2000)
“Why bother to remake Fame if you don't have clue about why the 1980 movie was special? Why take a touching experience and make it into a shallow exercise? Why begin with a R-rated look at plausible kids with real problems and tame it into a PG-rated after-school special? Why cast actors who are sometimes too old and experienced to play seniors, let alone freshmen?”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Fame (23 Sep 2009)
“OK. We're on the sofa. We look at the scene. We take a second look. We focus on Travolta. This is an athlete. His reflexes are on a hair trigger. He can deal with several enemies at a time. He can duck, jump, hurdle, spin and leap. One slight miscalculation, and he's dead. He doesn't miss a beat. He's in superb condition, especially for a guy whose favorite food is Cheese Royales. That's a little joke reminding us of "Pulp Fiction," and the last thing you should do is remind the audience of a movie they'd rather be home watching.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of From Paris with Love (3 February 2010)
“By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies... Gladiator lacks joy. It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Gladiator (5 May 2000)
“Call me hardhearted, call me cynical, but please don't call me if they make Home Alone 3.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (20 November 1992)
“It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when she's in scenes all by herself.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Picture Perfect (1 August 1997)
“You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer. The Punisher: War Zone [sic] is one of the best-made bad movies I've seen...Its only flaw is that it's disgusting.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Punisher: War Zone (3 December 2008)
“Consider an opening musical number set in a maternity ward, where Tommy Pickles and his friends Chuckie Finster and Phil and Lil DeVille are hoping for a look at Tommy's new kid brother, Dilbert. (Dil Pickles — get it? For Rugrats fans, this is humor of the highest order.) They wake up the babies, who do a number that seems inspired by Bubsy Berkeley, except that the Berkeley girls never had to supply their own dancing waters, if you get my drift.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Rugrats Movie (20 November 1998)
“Showgirls is the first big-budget "adults only" movie in a few years and, to be sure, it contains so much nudity that the sexy parts are when the girls put on their clothes. It contains no true eroticism, however, and that's why I think it reflects a grounding in sexual fantasy: Eroticism requires a mental connection between two people, while masturbation requires only the other person's image.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Showgirls (22 September 1995)
“Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Troy (14 May 2004)
“Valentine's Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Valentine's Day (10 February 2010)
“There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Wedding Crashers (14 July 2005)
“In the upstairs bedroom, old Ann dies very slowly, remembering the events of the long-ago wedding night and the next morning...She is attended by a nurse with an Irish accent (Eileen Atkins), who sometimes prompts her: "Remember a happy time!" Dissolve to Ann's memory of a happy time. It is so mundane that if it qualifies as a high point in her life, it compares with Paris Hilton remembering a good stick of gum.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Evening (29 June 2007)
“There's one thing to be said for a remake of a 1984 movie that uses the original's screenplay. This 2011 version is so similar — sometimes song for song and line for line — that I was wickedly tempted to reprint my 1984 review, word for word. But That Would be Wrong.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Footloose (12 October 2011)
“Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy. Less enlightened than Gone with the Wind, obsessed with military strategy, impartial between South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; "Stonewall" Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Gods and Generals (21 February 2003)
“Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Godzilla (26 May 1998)
“Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka's costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. "They weren't at all historically accurate," grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: "I guess that's what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Immortals (9 November 2011)
“I was noodling around Rotten Tomatoes, trying to determine who played the bank's security chief, and noticed the movie had not yet been reviewed by anybody. Hold on! In the "Forum" section for this movie, "islandhome" wrote at 7:58 a.m. Jan. 8: "review of this movie … tonight i'll post." At 11:19 a.m. Jan. 10, "islandhome" was finally back with the promised review. It is written without capital letters, flush left like a poem, and I quote it verbatim, spelling and all:”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that Clerks played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Mallrats (20 October 1995)
“We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of Adam Sandler make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of Napoleon Dynamite, I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Napoleon Dynamite (18 June 2004)
“They say baseball is popular because everyone thinks they can play it. Similar reasoning may explain the popularity of the Olsen twins: Teenage girls love them because they believe they could be them. What, after all, do Mary-Kate and Ashley do in New York Minute that could not be done by any reasonably presentable female adolescent? Their careers are founded not on what they do, but on the vicarious identification of their fans, who enjoy seeing two girls making millions for doing what just about anybody could do.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of New York Minute (7 May 2004)
“Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Pearl Harbor (25 May 2001)
“It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Pink Panther (10 February 2006)
“Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, 'You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music.'”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Psycho (6 December 1998)
“Here's a movie that stretches out every moment for more than it's worth, until even the moments of inspiration seem forced. Since the basic idea of the movie is a good one and there are talented people in the cast, what we have here is a film shot down by its own forced and mannered style.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Raising Arizona (20 March 1987)
“These aren't nerds. They're a bunch of interesting guys, and that's the problem with Revenge of the Nerds II. The movie doesn't have the nerve to be about real nerds. It hedges its bets. A nerd is not a nerd because he understands computers and wears a plastic pen protector in his shirt pocket. A nerd is a nerd because he brings a special lack of elegance to life. An absence of style. An inability to notice the feelings of other people. A nerd is a nerd from the inside out, which is something the nerds who made this movie will never understand.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (13 July 1987)
“I know aliens from other worlds are required to arrive in New Mexico, but why stay there?”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Thor (10 May 2011)
“D. Kepesh of Chicago writes, "Do you ever find yourself distracted during a screening by thoughts of the review you will later write? Distracted to the point of missing part of the film?" Sometimes it gets much worse than that, D. Sometimes a movie is so witless that I abandon any attempt to think up clever lines for my review, and return in defeat to actually watching the film itself. I approach it as an opportunity for meditation. My mantra is "aargh ... aargh ...”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of A Night at the Roxbury (2 October 1998)
“I remember when hard-core first became commonplace, and there were discussions about what it would be like if a serious director ever made a porn movie. The answer, judging by Anatomy of Hell, is that the audience would decide they did not require such a serious director after all.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Anatomy of Hell (12 November 2004)
“Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. Armageddon is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Armageddon (1 July 1998)
“So OK. Let’s say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you’re an objectivist or a libertarian, and you’ve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown. It’s not enough that a movie agree with you, in however an incoherent and murky fashion. It would help if it were like, you know, entertaining?”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Atlas Shrugged: Part I (14 April 2011)
“The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Bucket List (10 January 2008)
“The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Catwoman (23 July 2004)
“I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Diary of a Mad Black Woman (25 February 2005)
“Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Frighteners (19 July 1996)
“There is a word for this movie, and that word is: Ick.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Good Luck Chuck (21 September 2007)
“I Am Curious (Yellow) is not merely not erotic. It is anti-erotic. Two hours of this movie will drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks. See the picture and buy twin beds... I think there actually is a director in Sweden who is dull and square enough to seriously consider this an art of moviemaking.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of I Am Curious (Yellow) (23 September 1969)
“The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign... After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 October 1997)
“They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It's possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll or the desert intestine from Star wars. To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. It doesn't look like a snowman, anyway.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Jack Frost (11 December 1998)
“In this business one becomes a connoisseur. I can now see that [[Jim Carrey|[Jim] Carrey]] is a virtuoso, [[w:Chris Farley|[Chris] Farley]] is at least hard-working, [[Adam Sandler|[Adam] Sandler]] is hopeless and Pauly Shore bypasses all categories to achieve a kind of transcendent fingernails-on-the-blackboard effect. His appeal must be limited to people whose self-esteem and social skills are so damaged that they find humor, or at least relief, in at last encountering a movie character less successful than themselves.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Jury Duty (12 April 1995)
“...in New Year's Eve, we look out over the surging throng of ecstatic celebrants, and the sea of humanity is blue. They're all wearing freebie hats from Nivea skin creme. No hats for the Knicks, Budweiser or [[w:I Love New York|I Heart [sic] New York]]. All Nivea skin creme. Countless hats of Nivea blue. I've heard of product placement, but this is carpet bombing.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of New Year's Eve (7 December 2011)