Roger Ebert let some time lapse between his TV review of the new Adam Sandler movie, The Longest Yard, and the written review. In between, he went to Cannes and saw all manner of films. And now that he has to write a review of completely disposable Hollywood programming, he regrets his earlier televised version:
Three weeks ago I saw “The Longest Yard,” and before I left for the Cannes Film Festival, I did an advance taping of an episode of “Ebert & Roeper” on which I gave a muted thumbs-up to Richard Roeper’s scornful thumbs-down. I kinda liked it, in its goofy way. There was a dogged ridiculousness to the film that amused me, especially in the way Adam Sandler was cast as a star quarterback. Once you accept Sandler as a quarterback, you’ve opened up the backfield to the entire membership of the Screen Actors’ Guild.
Now three weeks have passed and I have seen 25 films at Cannes, most of them attempts at greatness, and I sit here staring at the computer screen and realizing with dread that the time has come for me to write a review justifying that vertical thumb, which is already on video and will go out to millions of TV viewers seeking guidance in their moviegoing.
I do not say that I was wrong about the film. I said what I sincerely believed at the time. I believed it as one might believe in a good cup of coffee; welcome while you are drinking it, even completely absorbing, but not much discussed three weeks later. Indeed after my immersion in the films of Cannes, I can hardly bring myself to return to “The Longest Yard” at all, since it represents such a limited idea of what a movie can be and what movies are for.
Read the whole thing. Talk about your mea culpas.