Can You Guess Which Movie Roger Ebert Hated?

Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert was never one to mince words about movies he loved, often revisiting his earlier reviews to expand on why they cast a spell over him. Ebert was far more economical in writing about bad films, but brevity made them no less cutting: The writer eviscerating a lousy movie was usually more entertaining to read than the movie was to watch.

See if you can match Ebert’s cutting remarks to movies he found deeply flawed in the quiz below.

With onscreen partner and fellow critic Gene Siskel, Ebert spent much of the 1980s and beyond helping to shape and influence movie discourse. But some filmmakers didn’t take his critiques in stride. Director Roland Emmerich named the mayor in his 1998 remake of Godzilla “Ebert” and his assistant “Gene.” Emmerich was purportedly annoyed at Ebert’s tepid reception of his earlier films, 1994’s Stargate and 1996’s Independence Day. While neither character is crushed by the giant lizard, both come off as parodies. Not surprisingly, when Ebert saw Godzilla at the Cannes Film Festival, he gave it 1.5 stars. “Going to see ‘Godzilla’ at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s a rebuke to the faith that the building represents,” he wrote, adding, “they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I’ve inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones.”

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