The Weekday Ramble is a daily dose of sports, music, culture, and more from Rambling On founder Erik Ritland. For more information check us out on Twitter, Facebook, or at our website.
Monday June 8, 2015
Starting out the week with four more humorous, negative movie reviews from legendary critic Roger Ebert. Heavily indebted to an article by the lovely Stacy Conradt.
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (zero stars)
[The title character] makes a living prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. 'Deuce Bigalow' is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.... Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.
You know your movie is bad when Ebert pulls out the “I’m a Pulitzer Prize winner” card. “Aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience” – ouch. Harsh, but accurate.
Spice World (half star)
Spice World is obviously intended as a ripoff of 'A Hard Day's Night' which gave The Beatles to the movies...the huge difference, of course, is that the Beatles were talented--while, let's face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts.
Ebert is wrong here: depending on the location, any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin’ Donuts would probably do better than the Spice Girls. I’m guessing that the half star is for Meatloaf’s memorable cameo.
Charlie’s Angels (half star)
Charlie’s Angels is like the trailer for a video game movie, lacking only the video game, and the movie.
The half star for this one is probably for the Cameron Diaz underwear scene. Or was that in the Charlie's Angels 2? I haven’t seen either so I’m not much of an authority on this franchise.
Tommy Boy (one star)
No one is funny in Tommy Boy. There are no memorable lines. None of the characters is interesting, except for the enigmatic figure played by Rob Lowe, who seems to have wandered over from ‘Hamlet.’ Judging by the evidence on the screen, the movie got a green light before a usable screenplay had been prepared, with everybody reassuring themselves that since they were such funny people, inspiration would overcome them.
Okay, so Ebert swung and missed on this one. Everyone is funny in Tommy Boy, there are a ton of memorable lines, and the characters may not be interesting but they’re very funny. To Ebert's credit gave it a single star, the highest rating he gave any of the movies I’ve highlighted over the last two blogs.
Erik Ritland is a writer and musician from St. Paul, Minnesota. His blog and podcast Rambling On features commentary on music, sports, culture, and more. He was also Lead Staff Writer for Minnesota culture blog Curious North.
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