{"id":74636,"date":"2025-08-18T03:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T03:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/74636\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T03:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T03:56:11","slug":"the-movie-roger-ebert-hated-so-much-he-felt-sorry-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/74636\/","title":{"rendered":"The movie Roger Ebert hated so much he felt sorry for it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert<\/p>\n

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

Sun 17 August 2025 18:40, UK <\/p>\n

Things don\u2019t get much more disheartening for a filmmaker, of those who dare to read their reviews, anyway, than realising they\u2019ve made a stinker. That said, hearing Roger Ebert<\/a> call your film so bad it transcended awfulness and made him feel sorry for it has got to be worse.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the critical equivalent of, \u2018I\u2019m not angry, just disappointed\u2019. Here\u2019s someone who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> or Vincent Gallo. And yet, it\u2019s almost cruel to offer commiserations for a movie that had its heart in the right place but failed to achieve anything of note.<\/p>\n

Donald Petrie is a solid-if-unspectacular pair of hands with a list of random credits that includes Julia Roberts\u2019 Mystic Pizza, Macaulay Culkin\u2019s Richie Rich, Sandra Bullock\u2019s Miss Congeniality, and Gene Hackman\u2019s swansong<\/a>, Welcome to Mooseport. 2009\u2019s My Life in Ruins starred Nia Vardalos in her second post-My Big Fat Greek Wedding leading role, and Ebert didn\u2019t care for it at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cRarely has a film centred on a character so superficial and unconvincing, played with such unrelenting sameness,\u201d he opened a 1.5-star review<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t hate it so much as feel sorry for it.\u201d The uninvolving story focuses on Vardalos\u2019 tour guide, who decides she\u2019s giving up the job before forging an unlikely bond with a guest that threatens to upend her life for the better.<\/p>\n

To underline his general distaste, he felt compelled to point out that Alexis Georgoulis\u2019 character, Poupi Kakas, has a name that\u2019s pronounced exactly like \u201cpoopy.\u201d 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\u2019t exactly hold his interest.<\/p>\n

Vardalos\u2019 performance? \u201cHer acting in the film feels uncomfortably close to her posing for a portrait.\u201d The characters? \u201cTeeth-gratingly broad and obvious.\u201d The central romance? \u201cEmbarrassing.\u201d Richard Dreyfuss, who Ebert called the only member of the cast worth the price of admission? \u201cEventually reveals a sentimental side and does something else that is required in the Screenplay Recycling Handbook.\u201d The movie as a whole? \u201cThere is, in short, nothing I liked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posing a question he tried to answer himself, Ebert asked, \u201cWhat happened to the Nia Vardalos who wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?\u201d He had a theory, albeit one prefaced by the suggestion that \u201cto speculate on people\u2019s motives is risky and can be unfair,\u201d which didn\u2019t stop him.<\/p>\n

He speculated that \u201cnow she is rich, famous, and perhaps taking herself too seriously,\u201d she\u2019d 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\u2019s that beating coming more from a place of pity than disdain.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Sun 17 August 2025 18:40, UK Things don\u2019t get much more disheartening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,38263,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-74636","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\/74636","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=74636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}