Roger Ebert Quotes

Most movies were always terrible.

I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.

If it's a terrible script, it's a terrible bore.

Bad movies are when people go, 'oh, I wasted $10 bucks and 2 hours and I don't even want to go back again.'

'Downton Abbey' is just one cliche after another, and it is a really, really poor piece of drama. But that's only me talking. That's just my take on it.

Being dull and boring is far more tragic than being tacky.

I see something that seems like standard fare, that I can imagine any number of actors playing, and I'm generally not interested.

Most movies aren't any good.

'Boat Trip' is more tiresome and dumb than actually bad.

There's a lot of crap out there. Most of the science fiction films alone are abominations, you know. They're mindless. So you can't learn from those kinds of films.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

In fact, Cannonball Run II. I used to pick that as the worst movie ever made.

I wouldn't say Swansea was a bad experience, but I would say it was not the best experience.

Many hundred-million-dollar Hollywood comedies aren't any good. They're trying to shock you.

Most of what Hollywood puts out is crap anyway.

A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes.

I don't think good films have messages.

I believe that there's good content or bad content. You see interviews when somebody interviews a director of a movie that didn't perform well in the box office, and he says, 'The audience didn't understand my movie.' If people didn't go to buy the ticket, then you did the wrong movie.

The sex with Mandy was good, but it wasn't like warm apple pie.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Nowadays, a critic has to watch 700, 800 films a year, and I know through experience, being a juror in prestigious film festivals where supposedly the best films are arriving, from twenty films maybe you see two that are good, one that is so-so, and one that is extraordinary. And the other sixteen are terrible.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

A third rate nonentity whose only recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one.

… the commonest little dog I have ever seen, without one sign of distinction