“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.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on Battle: Los Angeles (2011), Chicago Sun-Times
“‘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.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on Valentine’s Day (2010), Chicago Sun-Times
“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.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Chicago Sun-Times
“I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than ‘The Brown Bunny.'”
Critics: Roger Ebert on The Brown Bunny (2003), Chicago Sun-Times
“I’m curious about who would go to see this movie. Obviously moviegoers with a low opinion of their own taste. It’s so obviously what it is that you would require a positive desire to throw away money in order to lose two hours of your life. ‘Sorority Boys’ will be the worst movie playing in any multiplex in America this weekend, and, yes, I realize ‘Crossroads’ is still out there.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on Sorority Boys (2002), Chicago Sun-Times
“‘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. Oh, I’ve seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on Mad Dog Time (1996), Chicago Sun-Times
“That makes ‘Hellbound: Hellraiser II’ an ideal movie for audiences with little taste and atrophied attention spans who want to glance at the screen occasionally and ascertain that something is still happening up there. If you fit that description, you have probably not read this far, but what the heck, we believe in full-service reviews around here. You’re welcome.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Chicago Sun-Times
“This movie could have been made as a soft-core sex film, but it’s too restrained: There are so many palms carefully arranged in front of genital areas, and Brooke Shields’ long hair is so carefully draped to conceal her breasts, that there must have been a whole squad of costumers and set decorators on permanent Erogenous Zone Alert.”
Critics: Roger Ebert on The Blue Lagoon (1980), Chicago Sun-Times
“Tonstant Weader fwowed up.”
Critics: Dorothy Parker on The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne (1928), The New Yorker
“Cats is the biggest disaster of the decade, and possibly thus far in the millennium. It's Battlefield Earth with whiskers.”
Critics: Adam Graham on Cats (2019), The Detroit News
“If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would still be (slightly) better than this.”
Critics: Chuck Klosterman on Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu (2011), Grantland
“This cover version of Moussorgsky's mouldy oldie does have a big new beat, but you can't dance to it, and the instrumentation seems a bit spare. Anyway, the truth is that I don't even listen to the original much.”
Critics: Robert Christgau on Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition (1972), Christgau's Consumer Guide
“Thou hast to be kidding.”
Critics: Anthony Lane on The Scarlet Letter (1995), The New Yorker
“What is this? Crap. Say it loud: Crap.”
Critics: Anthony Lane on Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), The New Yorker
“I won't soon forget the spectacle of watching the mummified Sidney rise from his wheelchair to kick an intruder, unaccountably dressed in a moose costume, in the groin.”
Critics: Frank Rich on Moose Murders (1983), The New York Times
“It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and fuck you. There's a little gilt here and there, to remind us that this is a room designed for people for whom guilt is unfamiliar.”
Critics: Jay Rayner on Le Cinq, Paris (2017), The Observer
“Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?”
Critics: Pete Wells on Guy's American Kitchen & Bar, New York (2012), The New York Times