Roger Ebert

Ebert is an American Institution. I don't always agree but I am always amused.

Here's his take on Rush Hour 3

If you are trapped in a rainstorm in front of a theater playing this picture, by all means go right in. You won't have a bad time, will feel affectionate toward Lee and Carter, and stay dry.

There's a zen like quality to that that I love. But my favorite review the man has ever written was about The Country Bears.

Here is a story about a young music fan who persuades his favorite band to reunite after 10 years for a concert--and the fan and the band members are all bears. Why they are bears, I do not know. Do they know they are bears? Not necessarily. Do any of the humans mention that they are bears? Only in passing. Are there real bears in the woods who would maul and eat their victims, or are all bears benign in this world? These are not questions one is expected to pose about a movie based on a stage show at Disney World. We simply have to accept that some of the characters in the movie are people and others are bears, and get on with it. If Stuart Little's family can have a 2-inch mouse as a son, then why not musical bears? We must celebrate diversity.

All of Ebert's reviews are free on his Web site www.rogerebert.com And you can go back 20 or thirty years and read the old ones about great and not so great flicks. People complain that Ebert is too kind to trashy movies. I just think he's mellowed and he understands that when he doesn't understand something it is probably meant for a different audience.

Here's his take on Scooby-Doo

I am not the person to review this movie. I have never seen the "Scooby-Doo" television program, and on the basis of the film I have no desire to start now.

And then this

I am unable to generate the slightest interest in the plot, and I laughed not a single time, although I smiled more than once at the animated Scooby-Doo himself, an island of amusement in a wasteland of fecklessness.