(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 17 August 2025 18:40, UK
Things don’t get much more disheartening for a filmmaker, of those who dare to read their reviews, anyway, than realising they’ve made a stinker. That said, hearing Roger Ebert call your film so bad it transcended awfulness and made him feel sorry for it has got to be worse.
It’s the critical equivalent of, ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’. Here’s someone who’s poured their heart and soul into a feature, and instead of merely deriding it for failing at the fundamentals of cinema, the most famous filmic analyst of a generation has taken pity upon it for doing such a poor job.
Ebert tore plenty of pictures to shreds, and his words often cut like a knife for those who created them, especially if your name is Rob Schneider or Vincent Gallo. And yet, it’s almost cruel to offer commiserations for a movie that had its heart in the right place but failed to achieve anything of note.
Donald Petrie is a solid-if-unspectacular pair of hands with a list of random credits that includes Julia Roberts’ Mystic Pizza, Macaulay Culkin’s Richie Rich, Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality, and Gene Hackman’s swansong, Welcome to Mooseport. 2009’s My Life in Ruins starred Nia Vardalos in her second post-My Big Fat Greek Wedding leading role, and Ebert didn’t care for it at all.
“Rarely has a film centred on a character so superficial and unconvincing, played with such unrelenting sameness,” he opened a 1.5-star review. “I didn’t hate it so much as feel sorry for it.” The uninvolving story focuses on Vardalos’ tour guide, who decides she’s giving up the job before forging an unlikely bond with a guest that threatens to upend her life for the better.
To underline his general distaste, he felt compelled to point out that Alexis Georgoulis’ character, Poupi Kakas, has a name that’s pronounced exactly like “poopy.” If Roger Ebert is making poop jokes in a review, then it goes without saying that whatever else unfolds during the 95-minute rom-com didn’t exactly hold his interest.
Vardalos’ performance? “Her acting in the film feels uncomfortably close to her posing for a portrait.” The characters? “Teeth-gratingly broad and obvious.” The central romance? “Embarrassing.” Richard Dreyfuss, who Ebert called the only member of the cast worth the price of admission? “Eventually reveals a sentimental side and does something else that is required in the Screenplay Recycling Handbook.” The movie as a whole? “There is, in short, nothing I liked.”
Posing a question he tried to answer himself, Ebert asked, “What happened to the Nia Vardalos who wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?” He had a theory, albeit one prefaced by the suggestion that “to speculate on people’s motives is risky and can be unfair,” which didn’t stop him.
He speculated that “now she is rich, famous, and perhaps taking herself too seriously,” she’d become more susceptible to poor decision-making. My Life in Ruins is hardly the most scathing review Ebert ever penned, but if anything can be deemed more of a slap in the face than taking a beating from a critic, it’s that beating coming more from a place of pity than disdain.
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