Weekly Roeper Zinger Report #1

I wish I had been keeping a record of these one-liners since I first noticed that Roeper's reviews were actually becoming my favourite part of the show. Not so much the reviews when he likes the movie (though Ebert in the latest show complemented Roeper for being "poetic" in his mini-review of Duck Season (Temporada de patos)), but for his thumbs-down reviews: especially the ones where he is panning a movie that Ebert just said he liked.

On the whole I am finding myself agreeing with Roeper's taste far, far more than Ebert's: Ebert seems far too willing to give chances to some really bad movies, as with She's the Man, which really does look dreadful. It was his rebuttle to Ebert's inexplicable thumbs-up that gives us this week's zinger:

You could watch any sitcom half-asleep on the couch and you could see
better set-ups and payoffs than this.

Chuckle. I also enjoyed Roeper's suggestion that Shakespeare probably would rather keep his name off the credits for this film (though Ebert seemed think that this movie didn't have any problems that weren't in Twelfth Night; sometimes you have to wonder about that guy).

I wish I could remember some of his earlier jabs; at the moment the only one that springs to mind is in his thumbs-down review of Eight Below (which I'm probably going to see anyway: *sigh*), where he was wondering through the whole film how they were going to find a way to make Paul Walker take his shirt off in the antarctic, and good for them that they found a way. (It was funnier when he said it.)


Categories: entertainment, tv, reviews, humour, ebert, roeper, ebertandroeper, movies, film, critics, byjjmg