The 2001 cult classic Roger Ebert confessed he was wrong to hate: “I went overboard”
Almost everyone has seen at least one movie they absolutely hated at first sight, only for that stance to soften on a repeat viewing. As a career critic, Roger Ebert couldn’t backtrack too often without compromising his integrity, but he was known to make the very occasional exception.
For the most part, Ebert couldn’t have cared less who agreed or disagreed with his opinion. He awarded preposterously high marks to some objectively terrible films, but on the other hand, he also had a habit of failing to see what the rest of the cinemagoing population saw in an inarguable classic.
However, cult flicks fall somewhere in the middle. Any picture that earns the designation isn’t obliged to be good, but they all need to have an X-factor that makes them appeal to a wide audience. Some cult favourites are masterpieces in their own right, but many of them are simply bad movies that became beloved.
Depending on who you ask, Ben Stiller’s Zoolander is either one of the 21st century’s defining examples or an overrated piece of shit. Initially, Ebert was firmly of the latter belief, but he eventually changed his tune and even made a point of holding his hands up and confessing to the leading man and director that he might have been a little too harsh the first time around.
What was the legendary critic’s biggest issue with the film? 9/11, obviously. “To some degree, Zoolander is a victim of bad timing, although I suspect I would have found the assassination angle equally tasteless before September 11th,” Ebert mused in his original one-star review, with the catwalk comedy releasing in cinemas on the 28th, and he brought it up again later on.
Pointing out another last-minute change, he noted that “what they did was digitally erase the World Trade Centre from the New York skyline, so that audiences would be reminded of the tragedy, as if we have forgotten.” That didn’t sit too well with Ebert, and as Stiller explained, it formed the backbone of his apology.
“To his credit, I ran into him five or six years later backstage at The Tonight Show,” the actor and filmmaker elaborated. “He said, ‘Hey, I just want to apologise to you. I wrote that about Zoolander, and I think it’s really funny. Everything was a little crazy. It was September 11th, and I went overboard. I said, ‘Thanks for telling me backstage at The Tonight Show.'”
Ebert’s entire review basically unfolds against the backdrop of 9/11, and it goes without saying that it isn’t the best way to approach any analysis of an intentionally stupid caper about a pair of idiots who bumble their way toward thwarting a political assassination, but at least he acknowledged as much when he issued his apology to Stiller.
On the plus side, more people love Zoolander than loathe it; that much has become clear over the last 25 years, something that definitely can’t be said about the atrocious sequel, which was so bad that Stiller occupied the Ebert role and said sorry for his own movie.
