Author: Roger Ebert

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

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

Little Indian, Big City is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it…if you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again.

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

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

Dirty Love wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness.

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

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie.

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

I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny.

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

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

I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot.

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

Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line.

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

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

It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline – because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when she’s in scenes all by herself.

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

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

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

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

Wild Wild West is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen…

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

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

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

If you plan to miss this movie, better miss it quickly; I doubt if it’ll be around to miss for long.

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

To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.

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

Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell.

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

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

You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer. The Punisher: War Zone [sic] is one of the best-made bad movies I’ve seen… Its only flaw is that it’s disgusting.

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