Author: Roger Ebert

Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer’s estate should sue.

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

Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you’ve been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.

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

Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours…

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

Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners.

(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

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

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

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

My guess is that African Americans will be offended by the movie, and whites will be embarrassed. The movie will bring us all together, I imagine, in paralyzing boredom.

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

Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience.

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

The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project.

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

The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult showings. Midnight is not late enough.

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

I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.

(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

I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

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

The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. 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

To call A Lot Like Love dead in the water is an insult to water.

(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

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

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

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