hey roger ebert, when did you become so damn lazy?

First off, a message to Life After 208: You call me a peanut? More like, you guys are pea-NUTS! Burn! Now, if only Roger Ebert could still deliver a burn like that one...

Anybody ever noticed how Roger Ebert went from the once Burn King of the World, (and the Burger King king of the world! Get it, cuz he used to be fat) with his dearly departed compadre, Gene Siskel. . .

. . . to the "Hey, you know what I love? Movies! Unless they're by Rob Schneider, because he sucks" master with his new jackass idiot friend, Richard Roeper. . .

Based on these pictures, as well as his overall decrease quantity of reviews that score high on the burnage scale, I ran the numbers and came up with these results:

As you can see, Roger Ebert started his career with fellow burn-master Gene Siskel and went on the trail of building his reputation as a Hata' (is that the correct spelling of the term? Eh, who cares) of Crap to a Lover Of Film. Additionally, as he lost weight, and became more tolerant of bad movies, he got less happy. But obviously, who would be happy if they were sitting next to Richard Roeper? I mean, this guy is a bigger jackass than Dave Ryan at an "I Hate Gilmore Girls" convention.

All one needs to do to gather this evidence is to navigate his or her own web browser to http://rogerebert.suntimes.com and check out his recent reviews. Let's go down the list of new releases. First, Capote: 4 stars. Okay, I can accept that -- Phillip Seymour Hoffman has gotten some pretty standard positive reviews. Next, Good Night and Good Luck -- uniformally praised as "pretty good" -- 4 stars. Meh, maybe a bit of a stretch, but there've got to be some positive reviews in there somewhere. Now, it's the Chris-reviewed (oops, not Chris, that was guest blogger Charlize Theron) North Country, which gets, yep, you guessed it, another 4 star review. Hey Roger, I know you love stars and everything, but maybe save them up a little bit, mmmkay?

Perhaps the most damning evidence of this phenomenon is based on the reviews of the 2004 Neve Campbell/James Toback non-blockbuster, When Will I Be Loved. Metacritic, a pretty good barometer of overall reviews, gives this one a 39 out of 100. In fact, out of 34 reviews, only 4 get a "favorable" score, with three of the four going no higher than 75. Roger Ebert's review? Yep, you guessed it -- 100, aka 4 STARS!!! This is a film that includes a DVD feature called "Scene Sexplorations" (I am not making this up), where a "discerning eye" can see the truly deep significant meaning of Neve Campbell soaping her ass up in the shower. Here are some quotes from other reviewers:

"Most atrocious movies build into their badness, as lacks of talent, ideas, self-confidence, or a total hatred of an audience, are revealed. This one gets it out of the way up front and never looks back."

"It's trivial and narcissistic and ultimately rather sordid."

"Slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys."

"It's unfortunate that, nudity and all, this is one of Toback's absolute worst efforts."

Ebert's quote?

"'When Will I Be Loved' is like a jazz solo that touches familiar themes on its way to a triumphant and unexpected conclusion.

Conclusion? Ebert, start eating Big Macs again and start hanging out with douches like Chris and I and maybe, just maybe, you can get your burnage touch back. But right now, all I can say to you is THUMBS DOWN!

This entry was posted by Unknown, on Thursday, October 27, 2005. You can leave your response.