A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length

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Who doesn't like a great review of a bad movie?

I know I love the experience of watching an expert working close inside with a stiletto as they heap well-deserved scorn and equal helpings of wit on their flailing subject.

Weirdly, this is not that kind of book.

There are few zingers here, but for the most part, this book reviews a lot of movies that have two-star ratings, which means that these movies are mediocre and banal, but they are trying. In fact, it may be a result of Ebert's skill as a writer, but I found myself noting movies that I thought I might want to watch. These won't be great movies, but they might make decent time-wasters.

Of course, there are a number of one-star and half-star reviews that earn Ebert's contempt, and he offers that contempt up with wit and humor. Concerning Nicholas Cage's “Drive Angry 3-D,” Ebert has this to say:

“A movie review should determine what a movie hoped to achieve and whether it succeeded. The ambition of Drive Angry 3-D is to make a grind house B movie so jaw-droppingly excessive that even Quentin Tarantino might send flowers. It succeeds. I can't say I enjoyed it. But I can appreciate it. It offends every standard of taste except bad. But it is well made.”

Here is Ebert's insights into “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy”:

“To take off your clothing and engage randomly in sex with nine or ten other people reveals an appalling lack of self-respect. Is that all sex means to you, rummaging about in strange genitals? Masturbation seems healthier. It is performed with someone you admire. If a sexual orgy is as exciting as the people here pretend, why do they need to spice it up with costumes from fraternity toga parties, and sex toys from the remainder bins of adult stores across from truck stops on lonely interstate highways?”

Concerning the interminable Twilight saga, Ebert observes:

“Yes, Edward (Robert Pattinson) is back in school, repeating the twelfth grade for the eighty-fourth time. Bella sees him in the school parking lot, walking toward her in slow-motion, wearing one of those Edwardian Beatles jackets with a velvet collar, pregnant with his beauty. How white his skin, how red his lips. The decay of middle age may transform him into the Joker.”

There is a lot of good stuff in this book, but, unfortunately, I found it to be a bit of a slog because there are a lot mediocre movies out there.

And that is sad.