About 20 years ago WWTW did something no critic should ever do – he called people who disagreed with his movie tastes “idiots.”
Let me explain. My friends and I had just seen “Hudson Hawk,” Bruce Willis’ calamitous action comedy, and we were knee deep in our standard post-movie chat. Several pals enjoyed the film and began breaking down the reasons why.
I hated “Hudson Hawk” with a red-hot passion. Hate, hate, hate. And after hearing an earful of praise for the movie I couldn’t contain myself.
“You have to be an idiot to like that movie,” I cried. Suffice to say the car ride back to our neighborhood was quieter than usual.
That was then. I wasn’t a film critic, just a geeky college student with strong opinions on film who didn’t know better.
So what’s Roger Ebert’s excuse?
The famed film critic just excoriated “Battle: Los Angeles” and ended his review with this paragraph:
Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you’ve been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.
I haven’t seen “Battle: Los Angeles” yet. The Denver screening is tonight and I plan on attending. Ebert may be 100 percent accurate in his description of the film. But no critic should call people idiots for not lining up with their wisdom.
UPDATE: Ebert doubles down on the hate via Twitter.
(Photo: “Roger Ebert called fans of our new movie, ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ idiots. This means war!” Sony Pictures)
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Amen. As I’m sure you understand now insulting people who like something you don’t is more mornic than that simple fact.
I’m sure that there are a few dud movies out there that you liked, or even loved. Does that make you an idiot? No. It just means that you have different tastes than everyone else.
And isn’t that the point? In such a diverse society people can actually have different opinions. I wonder why Ebert can’t accept that? I haven’t been keeping tabs on all the blogs but if guys like Malton and Shalet thought it was good (and I don’t know if they did) what would Ebert say to them? Is he so arrogent as to think that he is the worlds ONLY authority on what constitutes a good film?
I think, sadly, the answer is yes. And when we know this, we should hold him in contempt for the idiot that he is.
Sadly, Ebert uses this kind of language all the time. When he’s reviewing horror movies, he often includes a sentence like “if you enjoyed this movie, that tells me things about you that I don’t want to know.” Talk about needing to lighten up.
Whatever his merits as a film critic (and I have enjoyed his many insights over the years), Roger Ebert has become a remarkably bitter and nasty human being over the past several years. Just read his Twitter feed.
Will G – He’s an icon and I feel terribly about his health woes in recent years. But yes, his Twitter feed is a pretty angry screed. But you’d think he’d take a different approach to a full length film review.
I noticed that, too! Was sort of taken aback. One of the things I’ve definitely learned during my time writing for actual papers is to avoid ever directly insulting a reader based on their taste. On the other hand, if pic is as bad as he says (and I hope not, because I was looking forward to it), then I can see some minor wriggle room for exception!
I think Jerry “Tycho Brahe” Holkins, who writes the web comic Penny Arcade, had the best response to Ebert, after one of those times Ebert said that video games aren’t art. Here’s part:
…there’s nothing here to discuss. You can if you want to, and people certainly do, but there’s no profit in it. Nobody’s going to hold their blade aloft at the end of this thing and found a kingdom. It’s just something to fill the hours.
Also, do we win something if we defeat him? Does he drop a good helm? Because I can’t for the life of me figure out why we give a s*** what that creature says. He doesn’t operate under some divine shroud that lets him determine what is or is not valid culture. He cannot rob you, retroactively, of wholly valid experiences; he cannot transform them into worthless things.
Gets eloquent when you tick him off, our Tycho.
I am with you on Hudson Hawk, for some reason my friends all think it is a great movie and while I think Bruce Willis is a great actor and one of the best action stars out there, that movie sucked balls. Since I don’t write reviews and have come to realize that going along with something never makes it better, I have no problem today telling my friends their love for a badly written, poorly acted, often contrived example of a comedy is a mark against their souls and sure to resign them to one of the lower levels of whatever hell their religious beliefs prescribe to.
Now onto the train wreck that is Roger Ebert. I used to enjoy watching him and Gene Siskel in the 80’s when it was impossible to see any trailers for movies without going to the actual theater. Their debates on the merits of recently released films was worth the half hour of school work I put aside to watch them. By the time the 90’s rolled around though the show had lost not only Siskel but also the appeal it held as well as the exclusivity of seeing trailers and scenes from upcoming movies. The internet and the wave of better review shows had me leaving the aging and often annoying comments of Ebert behind. Today Ebert seems to be an animatronics caricature of what he used to be fused with the likes of Chris Mathews and Keith Olberman. With the medical problems he has had it appears to me that he is more apt to be judged by how much medication he is on rather than his actual frame of mind.
Rant on Roger, your better years are far behind you……
Ebert should be just allowed to fade away quietly. He’s got major physical issues and IMO uses the endorphin high associated with political conflict and argument as a drug.
If he happened to be a conservative, he would have been banished from the airwaves years ago, but since he validates the left he’s given a pulpit as a kind of legendary freak show.
More to be pitied than scorned, really.
Interesting theory, K. My take on Ebert is that he wouldn’t want to be pitied because he’s suffered physical challenges and would like to be treated as just another film critic. My heart goes out to him for his brave front in the face of terrible health woes, but as long as he’s continuing to write reviews and engage in philosophical debates I’ll address his reviews at face value.
As many above mention, it’s a damn shame we seem to have forever lost this once valued cinematic mind. I also wish him the best of health as possible in the wake of his post-cancer life.
However, as less than eloquently evidenced in his Tweets, too much guzzling from the Kool-Aid fountain done turned Roger Smeagol into Gollum Ebert.
As soon as I heard that “Battle: Los Angeles” was a pro-military film (another critic referred to it as the “biggest military recruitment video in years”), I knew that Ebert would hate it. His instinctual knee-jerk liberal response can’t help it. That is why he praised DePalma’s repulsive “Redacted” (which we know hear motivated the Muslim shooter who killed some US airmen in Germany). Soliders=Evil=4 Stars. Soldiers=Good=1 Star.
Contempt for the audience. That’s what killed Dennis Day.
John Nolte disagreed with my take when I wrote about this at Dirty Harry’s place, but my biggest issue with Ebert is he does not seem to be able to walk away from the limelight. If he truly cared about his profession one would think he would have mentored a replacement years ago and left the spotlight to focus on his wife, kids and grandkids. There is immense narcissm in a man who is not able, at a certain age, to look at his body of work, determine he fought the good fight, and retire from the battlefield with the confidence that there will be great warriors to fill his place.
Also, about two decades ago I figured out that Roger Ebert thinks people like me are two dimensional cartoons to be mocked, ridiculed and laughed at. And yes, I did end that sentence with a preposition. He loves any movie where the upstanding, Christian family man and/or businessman turns out to be evil, a hypocrite, a serial killer, zombie food, a repressed homosexual or all of the above. Roger Ebert has a tiny worldview and I am not surprised it has become obvious now that our exposure to him is no longer restricted to 2 minute, scripted reviews of other peoples’ works of art.
I pray his health improves and he has many years left to enjoy with his family.
Actually, I think his health has exacerbated his anger, but I have a theory that all famous liberal men get more bitter with age. David Letterman, Bill Mahr, Ed Asner, Sean Penn, Jon Stewart,John Cusack, Alec Baldwin, etc., etc. Regardless of their beliefs when they were young, they were enjoyable to watch. Now, their bitterness just radiates from them. Most people seem to mellow with age, but they don’t!
I’ll go ahead and note that if the film had a scene where Eckhart was worrying about all the rape he had been charged with in Afghanistan, or two other Marines expressed their long-suppressed homosexual attraction to one another, Ebert might have been more forgiving. Like three stars more forgiving. But no, just a bunch of straight, non-rapist Marines, none of whom are even polite enough to plug Barack Obama’s election campaign.
So Roger, if I happen to enjoy “Battle: Los Angeles,” that makes me an idiot?
Well, with all due respect, I find it exceedingly difficult to refrain from howling with laughter at the smug, elitist pronouncements of one who co-wrote the story and wrote the screenplay for “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls”– truly one of the most idiotic films in the history of cinema!
Hudson Hawk is smug and masturbatory. It’s the most self-indulgent film Bruce Willis ever made, and it represents the nadir of his early career. Thankfully it wasn’t too many years later that he redeemed himself with Pulp Fiction.
The editing of Hudson Hawk renders the thing incoherent, and it plays like it was put together by people on drugs. The actors are all so sure that what they’re doing is hilarious that they cannot resist mugging their way through every freaking moment.
Oddly enough, the only actor who comes through unscathed is David Caruso, demonstrating through a brief, silent supporting role that he had the genuine makings of a star, as he would demonstrate a few years later on NYPD Blue. Say what you will about his descent into douchery, Caruso was a great actor for awhile.
I hope that Bruce Willis is ashamed of Hudson Hawk. If he isn’t, he should be.
Roger Ebert is nothing but a whiny latte liberal. He hated Battle: L.A. because the film portrayed U.S. marines in a positive light. Had the marines apologized to the aliens, he would’ve given it 4 stars and called praised it for it’s “philosophical” overtones. Plus he gave Rango 4 stars.
I agree with the assesment that Ebert’s politics has infected his reviews for the worse, but how is Michael Medved any better then?
but how is Michael Medved any better then?
Well, Jay, for starters Michael Medved doesn’t call people idiots simply because they disagree with him about a movie. There’s nothing wrong with a movie reviewer being open about their political opinions; the point is not to be such an elitist that you insult other people just for disagreeing with you.
You’d think a critic who gave three stars to a Garfield movie would be more careful about calling people idiots based on what they like. Then again, since I rather enjoyed the remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Ebert has already told me, via his review of same, that he “wouldn’t want to know” me.
Hey, cut Roger some slack.
The lower half of his face is a silicone prosthetic. That’s bound to make anybody a little cranky
(Not that that means you should pay any attention to his opinions about movies.)
That said, he can be thoughtful and generous – when a movie doesn’t push all his America-hatin’ buttons.
If the mainstream movie commentariat hates the movie, then ipso facto it must be worth a look. I went to see “Battle Los Angeles” this past weekend and, like those hateful critics, could not believe what I was seeing … How did this movie get made at all? It’s as fabulously unabashed and “subversive” as “300.” Great stuff.
In a way, the Marines in the movie are stand-ins for humanity, and wouldn’t you want them to be heroic, save the day and beat back the aliens?
Subversive is an interesting word, MM … and an accurate one.