My Beef with Roger Ebert
Categories: Blogs
Written By: Eric Jensen
After Mark and me, the only movie reviewer I think isn’t chock full of shit is Roger Ebert. Sure, there are times when I disagree with his positions, but I think he’s usually right about things. And most importantly, when I don’t think he’s right, I can at least see his reasoning. But I have to take issue with something I’ve just read.
See, I’m re-reading I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, Ebert’s pretty excellent collection of reviews of shitty films. In it, he has this to say about a movie called The Doom Generation. He gives the movie zero stars, which is just fine by me because it is indeed terrible, but just read this and bear with me.
“[Director Gregg Araki] wants to make a blood-soaked, disgusting, disturbing movie about characters of low intelligence and little personal worth, but he’s not willing to cop to that, and so by giving them smarmy pop-culture references and nihilistic dialogue, and filling the edges of the frame with satirical in-jokes and celebrity walk-ons…he’s keeping himself at arm’s length. Hey, if we’re dumb enough to be offended by his sleazefest, that’s our problem; Araki is, you see, a stylist, who can use concepts like iconography and irony to weasel away from his material.”
Did you read that? Did you read “blood-soaked, disgusting, disturbing movie about characters of low intelligence and little personal worth?” Did you read “smarmy pop-culture references” and “satirical in-jokes?” Did you read “use concepts like iconography and irony to weasel away from his material?”
Now that you’ve read that paragraph of the reasons The Doom Generation deservedly got zero stars, I want you to consider this very important fact: Roger Ebert gave Pulp Fiction a full four out of four stars and included it in his “Great Movies” review series.
In one case these things make a movie bad, but in another they make a movie great? Something isn’t right here.
(HINT: The thing that isn’t right is the four star review of Pulp Fiction.)
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October 7th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
The thing is that Ebert will say something nice about just about any piece of cinematic welfare he sees. I haven’t read an Ebert review in years because they offer no help. I get it, he loves movies, but most of what comes out these days are double flushers.
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