Roger Ebert - I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

Other Books by Roger E bert

An Illini Century

A Kiss Is Still a Kiss

Two Weeks in the Midday Sun:A Cannes Notebook

Behind the Phantoms Mask

Roger Eberts Little Movie Glossary

Roger Eberts Movie Home Companion (annually 198 1993)

Roger Eberts Video Companion (annually 199 1998)

Questions for the Movie Answer Man

Roger Eberts Book of Film: An Anthology

Roger Eberts Movie Yearbook (annually 1999 and 2000)

Eberts Bigger Little Movie Glossary

Wit h Daniel Curley

The Perfect London Walk

With John Kr atz

The Computer Insectiary

With Gene Siskel

The Future of the Movies: Interviews with Martin Scorsese,

Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas

I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie copyright 2000 by Roger Ebert. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ebert, Roger.

I hated, hated, hated this movie / by Roger Ebert.

p. cm.

ISBN - - -

1. Motion picturesReviews. I. Title.

P N1 . E 7 2000

.4 ' dc

-

Design by Holly Camerlinck

Composition by Kelly & Company, Lees Summit, Missouri

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This book is dedicated to

Gene Siskel

19461999

... who liked to ask, Is this movie better than adocumentary of the same actors having lunch?

I ntroduction

The purpose of a movie critic is to encourage good films and discourage bad ones. Of course, there is much disagreement about which is which. The films in this book, however, have few defenders. The degree of their badness ranges from those that are deplorable to others that are merely hilariously misguided. Some of them are even fun, although not so much fun you would want to see them twice.

For years I had a law that I would give the zero star rating only to films I believed were immoral in one way or another. Any other movie, however wretched, would get at least a half-star. In making this selection I find that I have not always adhered to that rule. While everyone would agree that Jaws the Revenge or Little Indian, Big City are very bad movies, for example, few would find them evilunless it is evil to waste two hours in the lives of unsuspecting ticketbuyers, which it may well be. Other films are in the zero-star category as a sort of default; any star rating at all seems irrelevant to John Waters Pink Flamingos, which exists outside critical terms, like the weather.

Some of the worst films in the book are so jaw-droppingly bad they achieve a kind of grandeur. With all of the making of documentaries available these days, why did no one record the making of An Alan Smithee Film, or Frozen Assets ? What values were expressed at the story conferences on North, the movie that inspired my title? What was the thinking on the set the day they first saw Rosie ODonnell as an undercover cop in S&M gear in Exit to Eden ? Or when they did screen tests for the karate-chopping infants in Baby Geniuses ? Or when they added a P.C. disclaimer to Mr. Magoo for fear of offending the nearsighted?

The easiest movies to write about are always the ones at the extremes. Good and bad movies dictate their own reviews; those in the middle are more of a challenge. In writing strongly negative reviews, I am tempted to take cheap shots, and although I have fought that temptation on occasion, there are other times when I have simply caved in to it. I am not proud of all the smartass remarks in this book, but remember that the reviews were written soon after undergoing the experience of seeing the movies, and reflect that when a film insults your intelligence, your taste, and your patience all at once, it brings out the worst in you. The movies made me do it.

ROGER EBERT

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

(Directed by Tom Shadyac; starring Jim Carrey, Sean Young, Courteney Cox; 1994)

You know that the French consider Jerry Lewis the greatest screen comedian of all time. Youve looked at some Lewis comedies, but you dont get the joke. You know that a lot of critics praised Steve Martin in The Jerk, but you liked him better after he started acting more normal. You are not a promising candidate to see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

The movie stars Jim Carrey, best known as the all-purpose white guy on In Living Color, as a Miami detective who specializes in animals. Hell find your missing bird or your kidnapped pedigree dog. And as the movie opens hes hired by the Miami Dolphins football team to find their mascot, a dolphin named Snowflake which is mysteriously missing from its home in a large tank at the stadium. The plot deepens, if that is the word, when Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino also goes missing.

Carrey plays Ace as if hes being clocked on an Energy-O-Meter, and paid by the calorie expended. Hes a hyper goon who likes to screw his mouth into strange shapes while playing variations on the language. He shares his house with so many animals, hes like those zookeepers on late-night talk shows who always have pets crawling out of their collars. And he is simultaneously a spectacularly good and bad detective.

The story eventually involves Sean Young, who is much too talented for roles like Lieutenant Einhorn of the Miami police department; Udo Kier, once a distinguished German actor-director, now Ronald Camp, sinister millionaire; Courteney Cox as the Dolphins chief publicist; and Noble Willingham as the teams owner. Most of the people look as if they would rather be in other movies. Sean Young is a trouper, however, and does her best with dialogue like, Listen, pet dick. How would you like me to make your life a living hell?

The movie basically has one joke, which is Ace Venturas weird nerdy strangeness. If you laugh at this joke, chances are you laugh at Jerry Lewis, too, and I can sympathize with you even if I cant understand you. I found the movie a long, unfunny slog through an impenetrable plot. Kids might like it. Real little kids.

Ace Ventu ra: When Nature Calls

(Directed by Steve Oedekerk; starring Jim Carrey, Ian McNeice, Simon Callow; 1997)

I knew a guy once who had an amazing party trick. He could tilt his head way back, and stick a straw all the way up his nose. I hesitate to recount this memory, because if my review falls into the hands of Jim Carrey, well see that trick in the next Ace Ventura movie and, believe me, its not the kind of trick you want to see again.

Carrey is an actor who gives new meaning to the term physical comedian. In the course of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, he regurgitates in order to feed a starving eaglet; shows how he can push his eyeballs around with his fingertips; sticks his arm down a mans throat to the elbow (in order to save him from choking on an apple core); and spits so copiously that he covers himself and two other characters with dripping mucus.