Author: Roger Ebert

It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica… it was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

John Waters’ Pink Flamingos has been restored for its 25th anniversary revival, and with any luck at all that means I won’t have to see it again for another 25 years. If I haven’t retired by then, I will.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It's possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll…

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

I've seen audits that were more thrilling.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

You know you’re in trouble when you’re reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add ‘almost.’

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

There is a word for this movie, and that word is: “Ick.”

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. … If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

This movie is not merely bad, but incompetent. I get tapes in the mail from 10th graders that are better made than this… I have often asked myself, “What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?” Now I know.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

If I ever do a festival of films that deserve to be overlooked, Friends & Lovers is my opening night selection.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive…

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Parents: If you encounter teenagers who say they liked this movie, do not let them date your children.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Valentine's Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Saving Silverman is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism

Was there no one connected with this project who read the screenplay, considered the story, evaluated the proposed film and vomited?

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter
Reviews/Criticism