Roger Ebert Gave These Iconic ’90s Movies Terrible Reviews

What did Roger Ebert think of Armageddon? What about Tommy Boy? What about The Waterboy? Each of these movies is considered a ’90s classic today, but Ebert savaged them when they came out. Let’s unpack what makes the movies listed here classics, and consider why Roger Ebert didn’t “get” them.

Ebert remains the standard-bearer for film critics even 13 years after his death. His legacy is as important to the history of cinema as that of many filmmakers and performances.

Yet Ebert didn’t always agree with audiences about what made a movie “good” or “bad,” and it’s fair to say he missed the mark on some of the 1990s’ most memorable movies.

Stargate

1 Star From Roger Ebert

Amazon is in the process of reviving Stargate, which has low-key been one of the most successful sci-fi franchises of the last 30+ years. The original 1994 film led to a TV sequel series, Stargate SG-1, which lasted ten seasons and over two hundred episodes. In turn, SG-1 begat two made-for-TV movies, two live-action spinoffs, and an animated series.

Stargate is the movie director Roland Emmerich made right before Independence Day, a movie Roger Ebert didn’t love either. While the Will Smith blockbuster earned Emmerich 2.5 stars, Stargate garnered just one. Ebert criticized the plot, and was thoroughly unimpressed with the film’s action. Not did he care for the performances of lead actors Kurt Russell and James Spader.

In retrospect, Ebert’s review is harsh. Stargate isn’t a bad movie, it just doesn’t live up to its full potential. Its greatest sin is arguably taking a unique premise and building too-conventional a movie around it. In any case, Stargate holds certified cult classic status now, despite what the world’s most famous film critic felt about it in 1994.

“Tommy Boy”

1 Star From Roger Ebert

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Roger Ebert didn’t always have patience for broad comedies like Tommy Boy. Ebert infamously gave the Chris Farley comedy one star, starting off his review by writing: “Tommy Boy is one of those movies that plays like an explosion down at the screenplay factory.”

Ironically, it’s funny how unamused by Tommy Boy Ebert was. Yet it’s a clear example of the revered reviewer being just plain wrong, especially when he writes:

No one is funny in Tommy Boy. There are no memorable lines.

Of course, any ’90s kid who has belted out “Holy schnikes!“ or quoted Tommy saying, “brothers don’t shake hands, brother’s gotta hug,” will be at odds with Ebert, plain and simple.

Tommy Boy is a case of a movie that was wildly out of sync with Roger Ebert’s cinematic and comedic sensibilities. But that doesn’t make the movie bad, despite what Ebert might have thought. Tommy Boy is looked back on as one of the defining comedies of the 1990s; to this day, it has legions of fans regardless of its critical reception.

“The Usual Suspects”

1.5 Stars From Roger Ebert

The Usual Suspects is routinely cited as one of the greatest cinematic twist endings ever. It’s also on most people’s shortlist for best crime movies of the 1990s. Not Roger Ebert’s, though. Ebert roasted the movie, giving it one of its worst reviews at the time of its 1995 release. Love the movie’s twists and turns? Well, Ebert was unimpressed.

“There was less to understand than the movie at first suggests,” Ebert wrote in his review. Essentially, he considered it little more than a bunch of smoke and mirrors, sound and fury signifying nothing. His complaints about Usual Suspects aren’t totally without merit, but they underestimate the “movie magic” that keeps people going back to the film.

That is, The Usual Suspects is all about its final surprise. Yet knowing the twist is coming doesn’t take away from the style and spectacle of how the movie gets there. Roger Ebert didn’t appreciate that, but generations of audiences have, making this a notable point of contention between the iconic critic and wider pop culture.

“The Waterboy”

1 Star From Roger Ebert

Another beloved ’90s comedy that Roger Ebert could barely stand a minute of. What makes Ebert’s review of The Waterboy noteworthy is how he writes about actually going into the movie wanting to like it. Trying to like it. And how quickly the character of Bobby Boucher turned him off, even as it was making everyone else laugh.

“Fingernails on a chalkboard,” is how Ebert describes Sandler’s Waterboy character. It’s not unfair. Bobby Boucher is a “love him or hate him” comedic caricature, and Roger Ebert hated what Sandler was doing with the role. General audiences loved him, though, and The Waterboy was a massive box office success, making $190 million dollars on a $23 million budget.

“Do I have something visceral against Adam Sandler? I hope not,” Ebert mused toward the end of his Waterboy review. He was aware, even anxious, about the fact that his opinion of Sandler’s films was against the grain of ’90s pop culture, but in the end, he had to be brutally honest about how the movies he watched made him feel.

“Armageddon”

1 Star From Roger Ebert

Armageddon is one of those ’90s movies that helped transform modern filmmaking, for better or worse. If the blockbuster was born in the ’70s with Jaws and Star Wars, it came of age in the 1990s with Armageddon and Independence Day. You know who wasn’t thrilled with the direction Hollywood was headed? You guessed it: Roger Ebert.

In his 1-star review of the Michael Bay disaster movie, Ebert started off by writing:

Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. “Armageddon” is cut together like its own highlights.

Ebert wasn’t happy with the film on any level, making its 1-star status actually feel generous. He wrote as though he felt genuinely insulted by Armageddon. Which is funny, because Armageddon feels like The Godfather compared to later Bay films like the Transformers movies.

Armageddon is spectacle > substance popcorn entertainment, to be sure, but in retrospect there’s still something old school about it compared to contemporary movies. Still, in 1998, for Roger Ebert it was a glimpse of a bleak future for filmmaking, and it landed Armageddon on his “most-hated” list with the likes of Tommy Boy and The Waterboy.

What do you think readers? Was Roger Ebert right about any of these ’90s classics? Or did he totally miss the point of them all?