Excerpts from one of my fave Ebert reviews

[shipperx]

It's funny what sticks in your head, but I always remembered Roger Ebert's review of "Battlefield Earth" because it made me laugh out loud.

So in memorium, Ebert snarking:

BY ROGER EBERT / May 12, 2000

"Battlefield Earth" is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. . . .

But let me catch my breath. This movie is awful in so many different ways. Even the opening titles are cheesy.

Sci-fi epics usually begin with a stab at impressive titles, but this one just displays green letters on the screen in a type font that came with my Macintosh. Then the movie's subtitle unscrolls from left to right in the kind of "effect" you see in home movies.

It is the year 3000. The race of Psychlos has conquered the earth. Humans survive in scattered bands, living like actors auditioning for the sequel to "Quest for Fire." Soon they leave the wilderness and prowl through the ruins of theme parks and the city of Denver. The ruins have held up well after 1,000 years. (Library books are dusty but readable, and a flight simulator still works, although where it gets the electricity is a mystery.) The hero, named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, is played by Barry Pepper as a smart human who gets smarter, thanks to a Pyschlo gizmo that zaps his eyeballs with knowledge. He learns Euclidean geometry and how to fly a jet, and proves to be a quick learner for a caveman.

The villains are two Psychlos named Terl (John Travolta) and Ker (Forest Whitaker). Terl is head of security for the Psychlos and has a secret scheme to use the humans as slaves to mine gold for him. He can't be reported to his superiors because (I am not making this up) he can blackmail his enemies with secret recordings that, in the event of his death, "would go straight to the home office!" Letterman fans laugh at that line; did the filmmakers know it was funny?

Jonnie Goodboy figures out a way to avoid slave labor in the gold mines. He and his men simply go to Fort Knox, break in and steal gold.

Of course it's been waiting there for 1,000 years.

What Terl says when his slaves hand him smelted bars of gold is beyond explanation. For stunning displays of stupidity, Terl takes the cake; as chief of security for the conquering aliens, he doesn't even know what humans eat, and devises an experiment: "Let it think it has escaped! We can sit back and watch it choose its food." Bad luck for the starving humans that they capture a rat. An experiment like that, you pray for a chicken.

{...}

"Battlefield Earth" was written in 1980 by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. The film contains no evidence of Scientology or any other system of thought; {...}

Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in "The Fugitive." I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. There is a moment here when the Psychlos' entire planet (home office and all) is blown to smithereens, without the slightest impact on any member of the audience (or, for that matter, the cast). If the film had been destroyed in a similar cataclysm, there might have been a standing ovation.

R.I.P Ebert, you were always the go-to trusted movie critic.

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I almost enjoy his bad reviews more than his good ones, for all the good ones can be beautiful and moving. But come on: I Hated Hated Hated This Movie is just such FUN to read!

What a great man.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think I'll have to check around for that one because when he HATED a movie it was frequently hilarious.

He always seemed like a smart but not pretentious guy. And he and his wife always seemed so loving to one another. He had a hard last decade healthwise, and his death is terribly sad.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Any hack can declare a movie bad. Only the great critics can dissect one, showing how utterly bad it is (and Battlefield Earth really is) while still saying "Goddamnit, movies matter, and we deserve so much better than this."

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.

And that's without getting into what he had to say about movies he loved... I'm going to have to buy one of his essay collections and re-read, I think. RIP.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

He will be missed. He was always the most trusted critic. He could review a film and not only tell you whether it was good or bad, but if it was good in a bad way... or whether you'd even care whether or not it was bad because it was fun. That and he could write beautifully on top of it.

[cindergal.livejournal.com]

Hee! I remember that review. A classic.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I know. It's so strange that over a decade later I still remember reading that review and thinking "Awesome!"

[molliemole.livejournal.com]

I can't recall reading any of his reviews offhand, but I remember many snippets of his and Gene Siskel's arguments about films. I will miss them both now.