With the passing of legendary critic Roger Ebert, cinema lost a titan while we lost one of its most prolific lovers. That said, if Roger hated a film, he wasn't afraid to tear strips out of it. Scathingly honest, he never backed down simply because a film had a huge audience, or indeed, popularity. Here's five films Roger Ebert hated, and more importantly, why...
5. DIE HARD
Here in the mildew-ridden dungeon where we keep our film reviewers at entertainment.ie, Die Hard is considered a modern classic and a paragon of action cinema. Roger Ebert didn't think so, although history proved him wrong. He thought the film was riddled with loopholes and thought it was "wrong-headed" and filled with "idiotic writing" - Jesus, Roger! It's f*cking Die Hard!
4. BATTLEFIELD EARTH
Battlefield Earth was pretty much slated by anyone who had eyes and wasn't a Scientologist, but Ebert made an example out of this one. Calling the opening titles for it as something "that came from [his] Macintosh", Ebert went on, saying that "...the Pyschlos can fly between galaxies, but look at their nails! Their civilization has mastered the hyperdrive but not the manicure." Mee-ow. Full review here.
3. SPICE WORLD
This film recently featured in our 10 'I Can't Believe They Were In That' Films, and Ebert was just as merciless with it as we were. "The Spices Girls are easier to tell apart than the Mutant Ninja Turtles." But that wasn't the half of it. Calling it a "rip-off of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night" and the Spice Girls themselves as "lacking in human characteristics", Ebert tore this film asunder. Naturally, it got half a star. Full review here.
2. ARMAGEDDON
Michael Bay, director of such films as Transformers and The Island, has been open about the fact that he doesn't care what film critics think. It's safe to say, then, that he never read Roger Ebert's review of Armageddon. Poking holes in the film because, let's face it, that film is riddled with them, Ebert called it "the first 150-minute trailer" and said that it was "an assault on the eyes, ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained." * Slow Clap * Full review here.
1. FREDDY GOT FINGERED
Wow. Roger Ebert hated Michael Bay, but he must have been wronged by Tom Green in some personal way. Freddy Got Fingered, which was a critical / box-office / every way you can think of failure, didn't so much displease Ebert as make him use a word we haven't heard since we studied ancient Rome in school: "The film is a vomitorium consisting of 93 minutes of Tom Green doing things that a geek in a carnival sideshow would turn down. Six minutes into the film, his character leaps from his car to wag a horse penis. This is, we discover, a framing device--to be matched by a scene late in the film where he sprays his father with elephant semen, straight from the source." We literally can't add anything more to that. Read the full reivew here.
