One thing I've always appreciated about Ebert's reviews is that he [has explicitly stated that he] rates movies from the context of the intended audience[1], rather than from the context of an aloof movie critic.
I like that he takes that approach here as well. This is the first time I read his review and his experience echoed mine, when I saw it as a kid. I remember that the movie sucked and I remember the toy/movie marketing tour that accompanied it.
I miss the guy. He was never an elitist and always willing to surprise you and engage with you on his blog.
[1]: Check out his reviews for Speed 2 and Home Alone 3. He gave both movies, panned critically, three stars. It's hard to argue with the logic he so colorfully furnishes.
For anyone even aware of Power Rangers (or any other 90s animated pop culture), go spend 44 minutes listening to the How I Built This podcast on Haim Saban.
Guy went from the son of a refuge pencil salesman (his family emigrated from Egypt to Israel when he was a kid, and his dad had to take what work he could get) to being worth $2.5+ B.
Among his other moves, he turned down a deal from Rupert Murdoch to buy his company (the owner of Power Rangers etc), and said he'd only accept a 50/50 joint venture with Fox Kids itself. So he'd own 50% of the combined venture, including the network.
Then he convinces Pat Robertson's son Tim to sell The Family Channel, which had the wide distribution they needed, to them, to convert to Fox Family.
Then he decides it's time to sell, is offered $500 M by Fox for his share. He thinks it's worth more, and asks Fox if they'll agree to sell as well, if he can sell the entire channel.
He ends up finding a deal for $5.3 B to Disney, and walks away with $1.5 B for his stake.
Godzilla 1998 popped up on streaming feeds recently. I watched it for the first time in decades and was happy with it. It got so many things right for a dumb blockbuster. I noticed Mayor Eberts as the bumbling mayor. This prompted me, like many others I'm sure, to read Eberts' review of Godzilla 1998. He panned it. Almost all of the critiques felt like they would be considered praise when compared against the blockbusters of today. The final line of critique, and imo the most valid, was the lack of message/theming in the conclusion of the movie.
I like Eberts' reviews. He brought good thoughts to the conversation. I think his harsh criticism of Emmerich movies was unwarranted. For a few years Emmerich had it imo.
That was one of the last movies that Gene Siskel reviewed with Ebert on his show. Siskel actually had to phone in to the show from a hospital - and he didn't like the movie either. But I remember that Ebert specifically asked Siskel how he'd felt about the fact that there were two characters in the movie named Ebert and Siskel - that were obviously intended to make fun of them.
Siskel called it cheap. But then he added, as a purely objective criticism, that the bit never actually paid off. That he was expecting Godzilla to attack the characters, but instead they're just still standing around talking at the end of the film. What was the point?
But whatever you think of any of that, that's what was so great about their show (and about this review, for that matter). That it creates this "middle space" between viewer and film-maker, for this additional giddy social mix of reactions and opinions -- all the "best of the year!" and "what were they thinking?"
Or maybe I'm just saying that sometimes I really miss Ebert.
There was a bonus track or something on an anime called “Grave of the Firefires.” It’s been forever since I saw it, but it was a discussion about post WWII Japan and how the anime industry came to be - Disney influence, why so many characters have a distinctly Western appearance, etc. It really was fascinating to watch.
(Edit: grave, not graveyard. Added link to his review of the film.)
Going off the tangent here, Grave of the fireflies was the most depressing movie I ever saw. Number two on my list, Requiem for a dream, is a distant second.
As a rule, I avoid depressing content and was wholly unprepared for the emotional pounding I got.
Watch (both) if you haven't, they're great movies, but brace yourself.
I first watched it as part of a double feature with My Neighbour Totoro, which is apparently how the film was first shown. Mercifully, Totoro is an incredibly sweet, gentle film, and provided some relief from Fireflies.
I think I have that DVD somewhere. I didn't see it when it came out, but saw it on TV years later. I guess the Matrix overshadowed nearly all Sci-fi that year?
Agreed. I’m not sure it was Ebert but I remember a critic saying, “I review movies based on one question, ‘how well did the film accomplish what it set out to accomplish?’”
This always reminded me of the “Baldur’s Gate is the worst racing game ever” post.
His reviews were always entertaining to read in and of themselves, and I found that his reviews tend to align with my own feelings towards the films, which is an important feature in a critic. However, he had another important feature: When I did disagree, I could usually tell from the reviews that it was likely to be the case.
I’m going to plug Margaret and David At the Movies. They had a good dynamic together and they weren’t pretentious. Though they often disagreed, the combo gave complementary points of view.
>One thing I've always appreciated about Ebert's reviews is that he [has explicitly stated that he] rates movies from the context of the intended audience
For this particular review, if that's what he's trying to do, he failed utterly.
Power Rangers was a massively successful media franchise at the time this movie came out. There's essentially no chance that any child will see it without having watched Power Rangers on television. If he's really going to judge it according to its intended audience, its intended audience is children who saw the series on television.
Which means that it doesn't matter that the characters are color-coded, the monsters look phony, the martial arts is fake, or the marketing is filled with the TM symbol. Even the bad dialog and personalities shouldn't matter, if it's like that on the show too, since the kids obviously know about it and don't care.
I was probably in third grade when I saw the movie. I hugely let down by it. My young self would have agreed with Ebert's review. It was just an extended episode, and the episodes were not known for their depth. My friends didn't like the movie either. It may be a coincidence but that was the year I grew out of Power Rangers.
We do children a disservice by insulting their intelligence.
I was into it at the time and thought the movie looked terrible, gimmicky and a pure money grab and skipped it. So if Ebert says it stunk I’m not so sure he was as out of touch with the intended audience as you say.
The problem with the review is not that the movie is good. The problem with the review is that the movie is bad (I assume), but Ebert got that part right by luck. His review is a mixture of things he shouldn't be criticizing the movie for (they have colored costumes which are faceless?), and things that he happened to get right, but which he had no way to know about because he couldn't compare it to the show.
I can imagine that the movie has worse acting than the show. But just saying "the movie has bad acting" provides no information; that doesn't tell you whether it's worse than the show, or bad-just-like-the-show.
Sorry this is maybe idiomatic, the idea of “faceless” as being without any visible personality...
Ebert was making the point that real teenagers have varied interests and personal preferences and individual stories that make them interesting characters who have interesting conflicts with each other. The problem was, the movie’s Power Rangers did not have this: they all had the same hobbies and the same interests and they did not have interesting conversations or conflicts with each other. In fact the only interesting thing he saw about them was that they happened to be power rangers. This made their journey to become Power Rangers anticlimactic for him: they all had very similar attitudes and preferences and tastes, so the only thing that was distinguishable about them was that they had different faces—but then the movie goes on to erase even their faces, so that they all are symbolically now the exact same person.
I actually think this would be interesting for Ebert if the movie “doubled down” on it, made it the intentional point of the film. So if the film was trying to make a bold point to teenagers that the constant striving to define yourself as an individual (dress a special way, act unique even for your friends group) was getting in the way of really finding unity with a group that could together accomplish what no individual does, that you actually need to find a group with a higher purpose and conform to that mission, rather than be some unique special snowflake. Kind of a play up those missing Confucianist values that nobody ever dares to talk up in America, that indeed we criticize other countries’ films as propaganda.
Of course if you wanted to make that movie, Ivan Ooze would have had to be a villain copy of, say, Rand’s John Galt—and instead of his ooze hypnotizing people into being his slaves, it would have to hop them up on paranoid narcissism so that they were only interested in pursuing their own glorious purpose, screw everyone else. Throw in a CGP Grey bit about how he becomes dictator not by holding the keys of power himself, but by being at the center of the people who actually hold the power, the one person they can all agree on as a symbolic figurehead frontman. Could have been very interesting if in giving up their individuality to become Power Rangers and serve a higher purpose, they became immune to the selfish nightmare the Ooze induced and were able to stand against it.
Just kidding, it's just a movie to introduce the ninjazords so we can buy shiny new toys
So because the TV show was a successful marketing exercise towards kids, the movie should also be considered a success because it was also a successful marketing exercise towards kids?
I remember once Ebert published a letter from a teenaged girl who was writing to tell him she'd liked a movie that Ebert had panned. It was another movie based on a franchise -- maybe the Bratz dolls? But I'll always remember how Ebert responded to her.
"I'm glad you liked the movie. I love movies too much to wish anyone a bad time at the movies."
Was a fun coding exercise a couple Christmases ago. The hard part was cleaning up the data and matching the reviews to the correct movie in tmdb.
I also had to decide how to map his 0-4 star system to letterboxd’s 0.5-5 star system. I ended up mapping his 0 stars to 0.5 stars on letterboxd, and for everything else just add a full star.
I never got access to letterboxd’s API. I just used their CSV import system.
My favorite Ebert review is for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (3 stars)
> Moviegoers who knowingly buy a ticket for "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" are going to get exactly what they expect: There is a mummy, a tomb, a dragon and an emperor. And the movie about them is all that it could be.
I remember seeing that movie in what must have been early highschool. We got free tickets to one of those fancy theaters that have recliners and a button to have a waiter show up. We had tickets for free food too as my friend's dad did some work for the theater. I had never experienced such opulence before and although the movie wasn't on par with the first mummy movie, I remember really enjoying it and having a great time. I've never been a fan of movie critics in general and although I'm no movie buff, I've seen hundreds of movies and liked nearly all of them.
I think one of the oddest feelings in the world is learning that a movie you like is not well rated. For example I watched the second Fantastic Beasts movie on a plane and enjoyed it, definitely excited to see the third. Then I went home and learned that people HATED IT.
While we're talking Ebert, my favourite was his review of The Longest Yard (the remake, with Adam Sandler). The balance that it strikes - to both respect a movie for being entertainment, while also acknowledging that movies (and art) can be so much more than entertainment, is something I feel like a lot of critics (and people) struggle with.
> I often practice a generic approach to film criticism, in which the starting point for a review is the question of what a movie sets out to achieve. "The Longest Yard" more or less achieves what most of the people attending it will expect. Most of its audiences will be satisfied enough when they leave the theater, although few will feel compelled to rent it on video to share with their friends. So, yes, it's a fair example of what it is. I would however be filled with remorse if I did not urge you to consider the underlying melancholy of this review and seek out a movie you could have an interesting conversation about. I have just come from 12 days at Cannes during which several times each day I was reminded that movies can enrich our lives, instead of just helping us get through them.
I didn't know it as kid, but the original TV series was created by dubbing over a Japanese show for the action scenes, and then filming new footage of the American actors for scenes when they're not in costume.
The white ranger was from yet another Japanese show, which is why he came later and didn't fight with the others.
So yeah, don't be surprised that this patchwork creation wasn't full of artistic integrity.
I was in kindergarten during this time and the target demographic. We were on the poor side of things, but even I had several power rangers toys and watched it when I could. Toys were so in demand that they were nearly impossible to find. Anytime Walmart, Kmart, or Toy's R Us got a shipment, they'd be gone immediately.
I saw the movie as a six year old and adored it. It was the first time I'd ever seen something I enjoyed as a nerdy kid up on the big screen. Some movies are made to be great for kids and adults, but I don't think it's a requirement. It didn't have anything *deep* to say, but it had a few things I didn't a lot of exposure to. People of different races, genders, and interests working together without being stereotypes, that was nice. Also, if you didn't laugh at the Brady Bunch joke you have no soul.
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.
I seem to recall somebody (AO Scott perhaps?) had a surprisingly positive review of that movie, seeing it as possibly some kind of experimental cinema. I wonder if there was anything to that or if he was just being contrarian; still haven't seen the film.
It's funny, because MMPR is an Americanized "Tokusatsu" show. In fact, the original series was a re-cut Tokusatsu show, with American actors spliced in between Japanese action scenes and props.
Some notable examples are Giant Robo, Kamen Rider, and Kikaider.
They are children's television shows that are, lets face it, trash.
But, they find an audience. The shlockyness, the cheesy rubber suits, the bad acting, and the razor-thin plots all serve one purpose: To get two people into rubber suites so they can smash up a cardboard city and set off some squibs and pyrotechnics.
Do they exist to sell toys? of course. But, they were also made by teams of people all making music, designing suits, building props, planning pyrotechnics, acting, doing stunts ( driving and physical ), choreographing fights, and designing the "monster of the week."
There is a humanity to these shows. They are cheesy little guerilla operations doing the best they can with a small budget.
I remember for the Friar’s Club roast of Rob Reiner one comedian just read that review.
“ I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”
I must confess I actually enjoyed it as a kid, along with the show. I had low standards and a short attention span. I would fast forward through slow parts of movies all the time (like that "Cheer Up Charlie" song in Willy Wonka... go to the factory already). The Power Rangers movie served as a long toy commercial, so the bland characters worked fine for me, I just wanted to see them fight and then go play with the action figures. So I disagree with the critique that "the movie will do what it can to deaden their imaginations"; that's giving the children like me too much credit! They even sold that purple ooze to compete with Nickelodeon's Gak Splat and the TMNT green ooze. (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- a similar franchise for which the show and movies served only as fodder to encourage me to smash my action figures together.)
This is one of the examples where I enjoy Roger's reviews more than the movie itself. But don't get me wrong, this goes for some "good" movies too. I remember one where I just didn't understand of get it, and then I read his review, and an ah-ha moment made the movie connect with me.
The 1996 release of Godzilla with Matthew Broderick had a character named Mayor Ebert, and this was no accident. Director Roland Emmerich had apparently gotten a bad review from him in the past and decided to get his revenge by naming this pathetic character in the movie after Roger Ebert.
Mayor Ebert : What the hell's the matter with you people? You've caused more damage than that goddamn thing did!
Gene - Mayor's Aide : All right, Mayor, calm down. Have some candy.
Mayor Ebert : [flails his arms around like a child having a tantrum, knocking the bag of candy out of Gene's hand] No, I don't want any candy! Leave me alone
He had a valid point: Kids movies can be better. Why not try harder? The usual path out is to make it somehow educational which sucks, because kids know when they're being lectured. But they could have put some decent dialogue and dad-jokes in. Spongebob movie was a gem, packed full of bizarre witticisms and the Hof.
But I do think Ebert reviewing MMPR is .. ok, next he could have done dragonball Z
Haim Saban didn't become a billionaire by trying harder in that way. He built an empire off of cross-national media translocation, not chasing Citizen Kane.
The movie that tried harder was the 2017 Power Rangers film, with a worldwide gross of $142.3 million, against a production budget of $100 million. Contrast with this movie, doing $66.4 million on a $15 million budget. Mich better ROI on just giving the target demo what they wanted.
I feel like yourself and the other poster saying Eberts review is bad are missing the point.
Given that the owners of the IP are filthy rich, they could have done a better job. Indeed lots of other production companies produce kids shows that are better and they make shit tons of money on merch: Star Wars, Frozen, Toy Story, all the Marvel stuff, basically most of the Disney stuff. All the Studio Ghibli stuff (actually I don’t know how rich Ghibli are).
Saban wasn't filthy rich in 1995... He was doing okay, but the Power Rangers movie was a gamble for his studio. He didn't bet the whole farm on it because it could have bankrupted them if it tanked on a huge budget.
It did great on the budget allocated to it. Bets like that are how he became filthy rich.
we're mixing goals. Eewoks didnt hurt the bottom line. Nor did Jar Jar binks. Pretty well everyone I know over the age of ten thinks the idea was flawed.
Oddly, nobody much cares that the cantina band is the muppet show. The music is just pure muppet. I guess we play mozart, so there's no reason the galaxy far far away decided the muppet music style was their kind of groove
I’m not sure if you are suggesting that we should or should not mix goals or if it’s a bad thing. There were certainly miss steps with some of these franchises, but they seem to be able to have their cake and eat it too.
He didn't review any Dragonball films (Wikipedia tells me there were about ten!) but here's his review of the first Spongebob movie. He thought it was pretty decent, 3 stars out of 4.
This is a bit of a silly nitpick but 'auteur' in the context of a movie has a fairly specific English meaning. Bryan Spicer is a successful and accomplished director but isn't an 'auteur'.
I never liked MMPR when it first became a phenomenon. The characters seemed to me like perfect little balls of nothing -- no unique personality to them, and they were like a hivemind. All of the subordinate Rangers always followed Red's orders -- seemingly in lockstep -- and Red always followed Zordon's orders. It was implied that they only got their powers contingent upon using them in compliance with Zordon's wishes, which is lame. It's like being handed the keys to a Ferrari and being told you can only use it to go grocery shopping for your mom. The way superhero stories work, usually, is that the character receives powers and then has to make the choice to use them for good.
The only distinct one was Tommy, but they were careful to explain that Tommy's bad-boy-ness was due to Rita's evil magic, not his own choices. Thus absolving of any blame but also stripping him of his agency.
(Rita was the coolest thing about that show. I always love a good, sinister female villain... because at the time they were rare.)
I never saw this movie in theaters because it just seemed like more of the same. I saw parts of it on YouTube and yep, looks like it. Like, don't they skydive and then rollerblade for charity in the opening or something? It just hammers home the point that the OG MMPR are what every fortysomething suburbanite parent wishes their kids were: attractive, omnitalented, getting straight A's and scoring a perfect 1600 on their SATs (the maximum at the time), all while lettering in football, participating in all the extracurriculars, volunteering at the homeless shelter and touring with Up With People. And always, always obeying authority figures to the letter.
I wasn't that kid, so I couldn't relate. I did, however, greatly appreciate the 2017 Power Rangers film, because it reimagined the Rangers as messed up kids who gained superpowers and... had to make the choice to use them for good. And were so stubbornly independent that working together as a team was a challenge for them. They were like the kids I actually hung out with in high school. If those Power Rangers were in the original show, I would have been way more into the franchise.
Later seasons of Power Rangers got better. Same hokey production values, but the characters were more human and fleshed out. And the primary original Japanese series behind Mighty Morphin, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, was pretty rad in a VERY cheesy way.
It's a blast from the past for me to see this particular review. I believe it was the first Roger Ebert review I read, shown to be me by my high school English teacher. It's partially what turned me on to Roger Ebert, and from that cultivated my current love for movies.
"That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic."
Of course that quote is now 15 years old, comes from a position of slef-confessed utter ignorance of the range of video games available even then, and was the answer to a question about Doom...
You wouldn't think of Doom/Quake/TF (or Pong/Pacman/Space Invaders) as art just like you wouldn't usually think of football, darts, scrabble or chess as art - generally you'd describe them as skill-based games or maybe sport.
While narrative-heavy games are unquestionably art just like movies or novels are, Ebert has only ever played Myst and some multimedia exploration game of Kyoto before he made that statement. He admitted near-complete ignorance of video games, so he wouldn't have known about, say, Planescape Torment or Monkey Island or Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis.
And of course Ebert is guilty of being a notorious edgelord too - he apparently also claimed that "hardly any movies are art" too...
Reminds me of a comment about books: that the best can elevate you to a higher level of being, some are enjoyable to pass the time, and some are trash that deadens your ability to enjoy better things
I was a huge fan of the power rangers as a kid, but he's not wrong. The only ranger with any personality was the green ranger, and he was essentially just mopy emo. Those giant robots were cool though
No, what popped it up? I tried it on latest Chrome and Firefox (both with uBlock Origin). Is it possible that it's actually something malicious on your machine trying to trick you?
This is hilarious! I’m sure Elbert’s cutting wit and no-nonsense method of sniffing out true cinema mastery and creative rot saved dozens of eight year olds from watching this film, thus preserving their intellectual cinematic palate for better works, such as Das Boot.
I like that he takes that approach here as well. This is the first time I read his review and his experience echoed mine, when I saw it as a kid. I remember that the movie sucked and I remember the toy/movie marketing tour that accompanied it.
I miss the guy. He was never an elitist and always willing to surprise you and engage with you on his blog.
[1]: Check out his reviews for Speed 2 and Home Alone 3. He gave both movies, panned critically, three stars. It's hard to argue with the logic he so colorfully furnishes.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/home-alone-3-1997
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-2-cruise-control-19...