Ebert was a very bad film critic

Plot details are not important in film reviews, and should be avoided aside from the most cursory details. Although it was often said of Roger that he went to the washroom quite a lot during screenings.

A very broad statement.
In order for Ebert to have been "a very bad film critic" he would have had to lack ANY knowledge of film technique and film history. He would have had to hate movies and their creators. He would have had NO knowledge of essay writing, or have NO guiding critical philosophy.
I doubt you will be able to provide any credible evidence to support your thesis.



Have a Nice Day. :0)

The reason why I love Roger Ebert is his glaring humanity in a profession that lends itself to writers who take a holier-than-thou attitude to watching movies. My problem with even many of the intelligent critics out there is that they watch a movie at an arm's length. So busy judging every little thing that they fail to see the big picture.

Roger dove into the feeling of a movie. He permitted himself to just go along for the ride and then turn on his brain after the movie and hash it over 17 ways to Sunday. I think that's what made him so unique. He didn't place himself above any movie he was about to see. He was equal to every experience.

As an avid reader of his, I can tell you that he made mistakes in plot details every once in awhile, but again, I would tie it to the fact that as a critic, because he didn't bring a holier-than-thou attitude to the movie that he was about to see, he was taking in the movie on a lot of different levels instead of being just a bean counter like most critics.

Roger was the most prolific film critic over the 46 years he wrote about the movies. There were some critics who came and went who were even more prolific over short bursts, but over the long haul, Roger was the "Iron Man" of his profession. When you write that much, there are bound to be more mistakes over time. He was a one-stop shop for decades in a field where almost every other publication around had at least 2 or 3 writers, while yearly movie guides like Leonard Maltin's had about half a dozen. All those publications make mistakes, too. It's natural when you're writing on deadline and writing as much as he did. When I think of a mistake he's made, I'll come back and post it here. Some of his mistakes are the totally forgivable mistakes you'd grant any writer because you can understand clearly how he made the mistake. I'll have to find it, but in one movie, a character said something to another character. He misnamed the character who was speaking, but as a reader it didn't matter to me because the point he was making was more about the character who heard it than the one who spoke it.

Big friggin' deal. Humans make mistakes. For the amount of words he wrote and for how effing sharp and funny he was, his accuracy was stellar.

In all fairness, Ebert often watched these movies before anyone else and with no prior knowledge of the plot while scribbling down notes. People miss or misinterpret plot points all the time, but they usually have the luxury of checking with IMDB message boards or wikipedia or movie spoiler sites to clarify. Ebert had no such luxury.