Siskel & Ebert & the Movies

Richard Roeper:
[after Ebert gives his opinion on one of the films they are reviewing] Oh, really! I thought this movie was *terrible*!

Richard Roeper:
You're too kind.

Roger Ebert:
You're too cruel.

Roger Ebert:
[reviewing "Freddy Got Fingered"] What is the most disgusting film of 2001? Well, let's see, in a field that includes "See Spot Run", "Monkeybone", "Tomcats", and "Joe Dirt", so we've got some great contenders; the champion is "Freddy Got Fingered", with Tom Green making David Spade look like Jim Carrey, and Jim Carrey look like Laurence Olivier.

Richard Roeper:
At least the thugs from "3000 Miles to Graceland" look like grown-up tough guys, unlike the teeny-bopper idols in "American Outlaws" who couldn't punch their way out of a casting call for a Gap commercial.

Roger Ebert:
We were on "The Howard Stern Show" once and Rob Schneider called in, and he was asking me how I could write what I did about the original "Deuce Bigalow" movie. And my question to him is; how could you make this second "Deuce Bigalow" movie? I mean, where is this movie coming from? Who were you talking to who told you that you should make this move, and that it would be funny, and that it would be good for your career, and that it would be worth money for people to go to see it? How in the world did this movie ever get made? It is completely beneath contempt!

Richard Roeper:
Our next movie is "Son of the Mask", this was almost a landmark for me. In the five years I've been co-hosting this show, this is the closest I've ever come to walking out halfway through the film and now that I look back on the experience, I wish I had!

Richard Roeper:
And here I thought "Dumb & Dumberer" was going to be the worst Jim Carrey-free sequel I see in my life, believe it or not, "Son of the Mask" is even worse!

Roger Ebert:
You know, I'm giving this one a marginal thumbs-up...

Richard Roeper:
Who are you, and what have you done with Roger Ebert?

Roger Ebert:
New on video this week; Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo in "Just Like Heaven" which got two thumbs up. "Doom," with The Rock, which got two thumbs down, and the Oscar nominated "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" which was loved by just about everyone in the world, including me, but you know Richard, it seems like only yesterday...

[flashes back to when they reviewed the movie for the first time four months ago]

Roger Ebert:
No, no, no, no, no. You can't! You can not... you can *not*... you can *not* give this movie thumbs down!

Richard Roeper:
[points along his thumb] Thumb... pointing... down.

Roger Ebert:
[flashes back to present] How could you of been so wrong?

Richard Roeper:
[reviewing "The Spongebob Squarepants Movie"] If college kids find this entertaining, they must be on drugs!

Roger Ebert:
I have a theoretical question for you, Richard: How far down can a thumb go?

Roger Ebert:
[after Shales gives "The Other Sister" a negative review] Gee, I liked it a lot less than you did.

Roger Ebert:
[during a review of the 1998 version of "Godzilla"] Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones.

[last lines]

Richard Roeper:
Until next week, the balcony is closed.

Gene Siskel:
[reviewing "Stargate"] Do you know that the budget, supposedly, of this picture was fifty-five million dollars?

Roger Ebert:
Boy, they must've had some great lunches.

[reviewing "Clifford"]

Roger Ebert:
[surprised] You took... kids to see this? This is the kind of movie where after kids see this, they should see "The Good Son" to cheer themselves up!

Gene Siskel:
Okay. That was about a killer, wasn't it?

Gene Siskel:
[criticising Roger's thumbs up for "Gorilla's in the Mist"] You're only saying you like the film because apes and a woman are there, and they look pretty.

Gene Siskel:
[referring to "North"] Well, I think you've got to hold Rob Reiner's feet to the fire here: he's the guy in charge, he's saying this is entertainment - it's deplorable. There isn't a gag that works. You couldn't write worse jokes if I told you to write worse jokes. The ethnic stereotyping is appalling, it's embarrassing, you feel unclean as you're sitting there; it's junk - first-class junk.

[reviewing "Leonard Part 6"]

Roger Ebert:
Maybe at some point there was an original inspiration for a good comedy here, I don't know. They certainly were not reluctant to spend a lot of money looking ridiculous in this movie and sometimes that works, but not this time. The whole movie is a mess, and even though Cosby has disowned it, he cannot escape all the blame. I don't think so. In one scene, his twenty-year old daughter brings home a sixty-six-year old man that she wants to marry. Cosby is appalled; this guy is robbing the cradle! What does he do? He calls for a sandwich and a Coke. And then he holds the Coke bottle prominently next to his face for the rest of the scene. First it says "Coca-cola", and then the next shot, it says "Coke", in case you missed the point. Who released this movie? Columbia. Who owns Columbia? Coca-cola! What is Coca-cola doing with this movie? They have a lot of products in this movie, Gene, that you can get a tie-in where you can get the product in connection with buying a ticket for the movie. I think that that is an all-time low: Bill Cosby, the richest man in show business, 67.5 million dollars income last year, *reduced* to holding a Coca-cola bottle next to his face in order to get a picture made at Columbia. He ought to be ashamed of himself.

Richard Roeper:
If there's one movie from 2008 you should avoid at all costs, that movie would be "Funny Games". The fact that it features fine performances, talented direction, and some moments of genuine suspense only make the end product that much more grotesque, and appalling.

[later in the review]

Michael Phillips:
Well, I think it's a date movie, Richard, as long as you're da... as long as you're dating... Charles Manson, or Squeaky Fromme, or something.

[reviewing "10,000 BC"]

Michael Phillips:
It's like an insane mash up between "Ice Age 2" and "Apocalypto", two movies that aren't really as much fun as this one, *I say*. It's about 10,000 pounds of cheese on a cracker, and Richard, now and then, know what I'm in the mood for? 10,000 *pounds of cheese* on a cracker.

[reviewing "Saw"]

Richard Roeper:
Later, we're given reason to believe *Glover's* character could be the killer, or maybe it's... somebody else. Whoever it is, I guess he has the strength of Mr. Incredible, because he kidnaps all these victims, and he can carry them to the appointed torture chamber, and then he *watches* them self destruct, because, of course, he has more webcams than the girls at voyeurdorm.com.

Roger Ebert:
[reviewing "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"] Yeah, that's the ole reliable scene where a perfectly innocent person does a completely insane thing and is mistaken by somebody who is scared out of her wits to begin with. That's the best friend and roommate in the closet, now why didn't she turn on the lights where she came into the apartment where she lived? Why did she make creeky noises? Why did she hide in the closet when she knows that her best friend has been terrified of slashers for the last twelve months? I'll tell you why, because a movie like "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" is so bankrupt of ideas, that it can't come up with interesting clich?s.

Roger Ebert:
[later in the review] "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" is a deadening series of setups and slashings, setups and slashings, setups and slashings, and for its viewers, it's a waste of ninety precious minutes that they can *never* get back. Just think Gene, that's three hours between the two of us, if you multiply that by the thousands of the people who will see this movie, it adds up to months, years, even *centuries* lost forever to the human race.

Roger Ebert:
[reviewing "Poltergeist III"] You always wonder how the tennis committee likes it where the building they own a condo is trashed in a movie like this. I hope they got free tickets.

Gene Siskel:
I hope they didn't.

Roger Ebert:
Now, I said you couldn't sit through this movie if you had any common sense. Why not? Well, because the following things take place inside the Hancock building: Whole apartments become filled with snow and ice, corridors are filled with steam, the parking garage and the swimming pool freeze over, several cars explode and turn the garage into a roaring inferno, you saw the bottomless pit, the sprinkler system floods the place, the elevators raise up and down like yo-yo's, windows are broken and yet at no point do any policemen or any firemen ever turn up, nor does any of this ever make the papers. Amazing. In fact, nobody seems to notice this.

Gene Siskel:
How bout repairs?

Roger Ebert:
Exactly. The screenplay for this movie is also amazing because it makes a serious tactical error. It uses too many scenes where the characters incessantly cry out for one another. Carol-Ann! Carol-Ann! Bruce! Bruce! Patricia! Patricia! Carol-Ann! Bruce! Finally, the night I saw it, even the audience was joining in! Carol-Ann! Carol-Ann! Bruce! I must have heard the name Carol-Ann about a thousand times!

Michael Phillips:
[after Roeper gives "Hell Ride" a positive review] Rich, the late Joey Bishop would come back from the grave and say, "Son, nyuck!" This film doesn't work as, you know, jokey sadism. It doesn't work as a straight action picture. Uh... did you... did you really see it?

Richard Roeper:
I did see it.

[later in the review]

Richard Roeper:
I wish I had a Chevy Nova and a drive-in and I'd go see it again.

Gene Siskel:
[reviewing "Highlander 2: The Quickening"] I read about this picture and do you know that it cost 34 million dollars to make?

Roger Ebert:
You're kidding me!

Gene Siskel:
Shot in Argentina... where did the money go?

Roger Ebert:
34 million, they must have had a limousine every time they went to the john.

[reviewing "Kids In The Hall:
Brain Candy"]

Gene Siskel:
I'm recommending this picture as kind of a midnight show cult picture, which I suspect it's destined to become.

Roger Ebert:
Boy, are we apart on this one. I did not laugh once! I thought this movie was awful!

Gene Siskel:
Oh, no Roger!

Roger Ebert:
Dreadful! Terrible!

Gene Siskel:
No.

Roger Ebert:
Stupid! Idiotic!

Gene Siskel:
No.

Roger Ebert:
Unfunny!

Gene Siskel:
No.

Roger Ebert:
Labored! Forced!

Gene Siskel:
Roger this is...

Roger Ebert:
Painful! Bad!

Gene Siskel:
What happened to your sense of humor?

Roger Ebert:
I got my sense of humor. That was what-my sense of humor was *starving* for a laugh!

Gene Siskel:
You know, Roger, first of all the drag stuff was funny.

Roger Ebert:
So what?

Gene Siskel:
What do you mean so what? If it's funny.

Roger Ebert:
Okay, they're in drag. Why is it funny that they're in drag?

Gene Siskel:
It's not funny that they're in drag. I've knocked pictures where people have been in drag and they're not funny. I'm saying obviously they're funny.

Roger Ebert:
Not funny!

Gene Siskel:
You didn't get the stuff about the drug...

Roger Ebert:
Oh, I caught on! I caught on.

Gene Siskel:
What happened, Roger?

[while reviewing Brain Candy the two completely disagree]

Roger Ebert:
It's just we're different universes here. We can't talk about it. Can't talk about it. It's not funny. I didn't laugh once!

Gene Siskel:
We get paid to talk about it, Roger. Let's talk about it.

Gene Siskel:
[on "A Life Less Ordinary"] I wanted out of this picture in the worst way.

Roger Ebert:
Do not adjust your set. There's nothing wrong with it. Gene and I are also in black and white this week for a special program that we're calling "Hail, Hail Black and White."

Roger Ebert:
I'll bet there's not a director in Hollywood who wouldn't love the opportunity to shoot in black and white.

Gene Siskel:
I think you're right. It's kind of akin to shooting a Western. Most every director I've talked to said they would love to shoot a Western.

Roger Ebert:
But my point is still an excellent one.

Gene Siskel:
Only in your head.

Roger Ebert:
[discussing the father in "Broken English"] It almost seems like everybody who has this kind of an attitude also has a big moustache. Now I'm going to get mail, right?

Gene Siskel:
Oh, yeah. The moustache police are on the way!

Gene Siskel:
[on "Star Trek V"] Everyone's getting sloshed in this film. Maybe they've read the script.

Gene Siskel:
Our next film is "Meet the Deedles". And boy, is this an annoying experience to the point that from now on, possibly for the rest of my life, I may have a negative physical reaction to hearing the word... well, it's the title word in the film.

Roger Ebert:
Deedles?

Gene Siskel:
Ooh, Roger, don't! Now, see now, he knows he can control me. So he's gonna start liking this picture.

Roger Ebert:
Deedles! Deedles!

Gene Siskel:
Stop it, Roger.

Gene Siskel:
Giving "Meet the Deedles" a thumbs down is not just a movie review. It's a public service. You have been warned.

Roger Ebert:
[on "Return to the Blue Lagoon"] Get the bathing suit issue of "Sports Illustrated" and be done with it.

Gene Siskel:
[on "Stepping Out"] Liza Minnelli transforms a bunch of shy, clumsy misfits into a high-stepping chorus line just in time for the big, city-wide talent show.

Roger Ebert:
You're kidding! Just in time?

Gene Siskel:
Just in time!