The comedy movies Roger Ebert hated most
All comedy is subjective, so Roger Ebert was never going to be left rolling in the aisles by everything that rolled off the Hollywood production line during his lengthy career as one of the industry’s most prominent and well-respected critics.
On the other hand, there are some movies he found to be so terrible and detested with such intensity that he didn’t just include them in the Most Hated section of his website; they were even listed under the withering subheading of “alleged comedies”. Needless to say, then, he was not impressed.
Although echoing a sentiment shared by many, there’s a very heavy dose of Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison Productions banner to be found. David Spade’s Joe Dirt is cited for how it doesn’t “understand the act of being buried in crap is not in and of itself funny,” with Rob Schneider making two appearances.
The Hot Chick required a “superhuman effort” from Ebert not to walk out before it ended, with his ruminations on Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo finding him ruminating on the title character’s profession: “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,” he said. As for Sandler himself? The Waterboy is called a “tactical error” on all fronts, which says it all.
Ebert “hated hated hated hated hated” Rob Reiner’s North, trashed One Woman or Two as “a waste of good electricity”, and describes Mad Dog Time as “the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time”. That being said, he did think buddy comedy B.A.P.S. “will bring us all together” albeit “in paralysing boredom”.
Ebert would rather quote Wordsworth than review Baby Geniuses, summarises Sorority Boys with a straightforward “this movie is not funny”, and cobbles together a modicum of appreciation for Spice World by declaring that “the Spice Girls are easier to tell apart than the Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that is small consolation”.
Director Arthur Hiller “wisely distanced himself” from the “disaster” that is An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, with Larry David’s 1998 effort Grapes generating a distaste even greater than that of North: “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”.
The Dukes of Hazzard “sinks into the mire of its own despond,” She’s Out of Control exists as “so bizarre and so banal,” while Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet’s characters in A Lot Like Love are interpreted as having “never read a book or a newspaper, seen a movie, watched TV, had an idea, carried on an interesting conversation or ever thought much about anything.”
Chris Farley’s Tommy Boy might have found life as a cult classic, but Ebert compared it to “an explosion down at the screenplay factory,” and much the same can be said of Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered, not that the critic would agree given a takedown that’s so vicious it’s borderline genius: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.”
The comedies Roger Ebert hated:
- Joe Dirt (Dennie Gordon, 2001)
- North (Rob Reiner, 1994)
- One Woman or Two (Daniel Vigne, 1985)
- Mad Dog Time (Larry Bishop, 1996)
- The Hot Chick (Tom Brady, 2002)
- Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (Mike Bigelow, 2005)
- B.A.P.S. (Robert Townsend, 1997)
- Baby Geniuses (Bob Clark, 1999)
- Sorority Boys (Wallace Wolodarsky, 2002)
- Spice World (Bob Spiers, 1997)
- An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (Arthur Hiller, 1995)
- The Waterboy (Frank Coraci, 1998)
- Sour Grapes (Larry David, 1998)
- The Dukes of Hazzard (Jay Chandrasekhar, 2005)
- She’s Out of Control (Stan Dragoti, 1989)
- A Lot Like Love (Nigel Cole, 2005)
- Tommy Boy (Peter Segal, 1995)
- Freddy Got Fingered (Tom Green, 2001)
