{"id":322716,"date":"2025-12-18T12:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322716\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T12:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:12:16","slug":"the-appalling-and-painful-movie-roger-ebert-awarded-zero-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322716\/","title":{"rendered":"The “appalling” and “painful” movie Roger Ebert awarded zero stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Wed 17 December 2025 18:45, UK <\/p>\n

All art is subjective, and as it applies to cinema, comedy might be the most subjective genre of all. There\u2019s no formula for having audiences uniformly rolling in the aisles with laughter, and one so-called comic caper left Roger Ebert<\/a> so stony-faced that he didn\u2019t even bother giving it a star rating.<\/p>\n

It became increasingly clear that the easiest way for a comedy flick to earn a scathing review from the noted critic was to focus its humour on the more puerile, disgusting, and depraved end<\/a> of the spectrum. He wasn\u2019t a miserable bugger who couldn\u2019t be brought to tears with laughter; he just preferred it if there was some wit about the jokes, as opposed to gross-out gags designed to shock and appal.<\/p>\n

Terminal illness doesn\u2019t sound like the basis for a laugh-a-minute riot, but there are a couple of films that have used a tragic situation as the backdrop for a combination of pathos and guffaws. Rob Reiner\u2019s The Bucket List, Jonathan Levine\u2019s 50\/50, Judd Apatow\u2019s Funny People, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl have their moments, so it\u2019s not impossible.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s all dependent on the script, the actors, and the performances, which Ebert found to be in woefully short supply when he wrapped his eyeballs around director Neal Israel\u2019s 1992 effort, Breaking the Rules. In fact, he didn\u2019t waste any time in razing the entire concept to the ground, which set the tone for a complete thumbs-down.<\/p>\n

\u201cBreaking the Rules is a movie about a guy who finds out he has a month to live, and decides to spend it in the worst buddy movie ever made,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe movie has to be seen to be believed. It is a long, painful lapse of taste, tone, and ordinary human feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fresh-faced Jason Bateman stars as Phil, who hoodwinks his two best friends into going on a road trip to help him fulfil his dying wish of appearing as a contestant on the game show, Jeopardy! Naturally, hijinks ensue, bonds are stretched to the limit, and the group experiences plenty of woman trouble of both a positive and negative variety.<\/p>\n

The plot wasn\u2019t revelatory or ground-breaking by any stretch, but the movie turned out so terribly that Ebert wondered aloud if that\u2019s because it hadn\u2019t been made by humans. \u201cPerhaps it was made by beings from another planet,\u201d he mused. \u201cWho were able to watch our television in order to absorb key concepts such as cars, sex, leukaemia, and casinos, but formed an imperfect view of how to fit them together.\u201d<\/p>\n

He may have had a point, since the critic was left wondering how on earth Breaking the Rules failed to use its central conceit to generate so much as one desired emotion. Calling it \u201cthe kind of movie where a scene is intended to make you cry, but you\u2019re not crying, you\u2019re wondering just how bad the dialogue can possibly be,\u201d put his point across fairly succinctly.<\/p>\n

Nobody would have been more thrilled than Ebert to see the picture crash, burn, and burst into flames at the box office, where it barely recouped 10% of its budget, which at least spared audiences the ignominy of having to see it for themselves.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Wed 17 December 2025 18:45, UK All art is subjective, and as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,38263,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-322716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-roger-ebert","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}