Roger Ebert on the movie he hated more than any other: “I can’t easily remember a film I’ve enjoyed less”
There’s never any account for taste when it comes to what goes over well in a movie theatre. Even if someone is looking to have a good time, there might be a movie that has the power to make people laugh, make people groan, or make people fall asleep by whatever they show onscreen. While Roger Ebert was no stranger to dealing with some truly awful movies in his time, he admitted that there were some that stuck out more than others when it came to the bottom of his watchlist.
But there’s a difference between what constitutes a bad movie. Although no one is going to say a movie like The Happening is a masterpiece of cinema by any means, there is such a thing as someone producing something so bad it’s good, as if they deliberately took every wrong step and made the kind of movie that any other film fan would point and laugh at.
Then again, there’s also the major choice for critics as to whether it’s worse for the project to be boring or objectively offensive. There are many shots that don’t come together that most people could enjoy at the moment because of its problems, but if there’s something that bores someone to tears, they would be more likely to never want to watch the film again rather than something objectively bad for a good laugh.
And while Larry David was no stranger to making some good laughs on Seinfeld, Sour Grapes was an example of him trying to sprint before he could walk. The whole appeal of Seinfeld may have been the slice-of-life style of every character being cynical about the world, but whereas most people could look at the anti-sitcom aspects of it and laugh, this was all of David’s strengths without any of the charm.
No one is going to call George Costanza the most likeable character the small screen has ever produced, but Evan and Richie Maxwell are somehow even more reprehensible. While the idea of someone having conflicts after winning the jackpot on a slot machine, seeing them go to the lowest levels anyone has ever gone doesn’t go over well when it’s played for comedy. As much as it could be funny in a dark context, seeing Richie try to get his mother out of the picture, hopefully by triggering a heart attack, is meanspirited for all the wrong reasons.
And it didn’t take Ebert long to realise the kind of cynicism that was left onscreen, saying, “Maybe [David] works well with others. I can’t easily remember a film I’ve enjoyed less. North, a comedy I hated, was at least able to inflame me with dislike. Sour Grapes is a movie that deserves its title: It’s puckered, deflated and vinegary. It’s a dead zone.”
Then again, maybe the silver lining for this was giving David more drive to make something like Curb Your Enthusiasm. While not every joke might land the same way that Seinfeld did back in the day, it’s easy to see someone taking the lessons that they learned from a movie like Sour Grapes and tweaking them to make them sound a bit more realistic.
While David does excel at pointing out the little frustrations in life that can drive anyone to the brink of madness, Sour Grapes is where all of the innocence of his first movies gets thrown out the window. He may have been capable of writing great lines, but this is the kind of project where all of the charm has been sucked out of the screen.
