Roger Ebert Can Go to Hell
5:32pm March 10th
If you suddenly woke up after being in a coma for the past 42 years, and I showed you one of Roger Ebert's movie reviews, you'd probably tell me to piss off, since you'd have better things to do. Eventually, though, you'd come across the unnecessarily wordy, uninspiring, barely palatable mess that he calls a movie review.
The only reason that Roger Ebert gets any work at all is because he's being doing it forever (see: The Rolling Stones). He has no idea what's happening today, no idea what's actually popular, and nothing to base his reviews on. His writing is the writing of a crotchety old man. He hates everything, because he doesn't know any better.
Critics of today have a choice to make; they can spend all day tearing into the trash that is the movie industry, and have an aneurysm before lunch. Or, they can lower their standards, and say:
“Ok, this was terrible, but it was better than Catwoman.”
To put it another way, movie quality is relative, like everything else. Taken by themselves, 99% of today's movies are god-awful train wrecks, destined to be mentioned in the same sentence as Plan 9 From Outer Space. When watched in succession, though, some are bad enough to bump others up to a half decent rating. So where was I?
Oh yeah, Roger Ebert is a twat. You'd think for a one trick pony like Ebert, finding a few good movies a year wouldn't be that difficult. Because he has no idea what's going on, and thinks it's still 1972, his reviews are slanted; biased, even. He's judging movies against The Godfather, when he should be using a movie like Sin City. Not amazing, but pretty good, and certainly one of the best movies of late.
If his reviews were amusing to read, we might excuse him for being a cranky old coffin-dodger. The sad truth is, though, Roger Ebert has no idea how to really tear into a movie. Reading one of his criticisms is like reading the report card of a below-average elementary school child; the teacher would really like to write a page about how stupid your kid is, and how he'd rather eat paste and boogers than his lunch, but she just can't.
In the same way, Roger Ebert lacks the skills to truly be heartless. He left it up to Gene Siskel for too long, and when Siskel had the good sense to drop dead, Ebert was left holding the bag, and scrambling to fill to unnecessary roles. I say unnecessary because honestly, what kind of jerk spends 41 years tearing into the work of other people? Who makes a career out of that? He was a doctoral candidate way back in the Stone Age, and yet he refuses to write anything that anyone could criticize. Perhaps he recognizes these shortcomings in himself, or maybe he's just afraid of the kind of criticism he throws around.
Roger: it's time for you to pull your head out of your arse, go away, and let someone who was born before the automobile was invented take over criticism of today's media. You're a hack and a coward, and I give you two thumbs down.