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.

Now this is a movie review: Anthony Lane of The New Yorker reviews “Revenge of the Sith.”

What can you say about a civilization where people zip from one solar system to the next as if they were changing their socks but where a woman fails to register for an ultrasound, and thus to realize that she is carrying twins until she is about to give birth? Mind you, how Padmé got pregnant is anybody’s guess, although I’m prepared to wager that it involved Anakin nipping into a broom closet with a warm glass jar and a copy of Ewok Babes. After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask.

I have a new criterion for evaluating someone’s critical taste. I will ask, “Did you see Van Helsing?” If the answer is “Yes,” I will ask their opinion of the movie. If they say anything other than, “Wow, that was irredeemable trash, wasn’t it?” I will have no respect for this person and need never listen to a damn thing they have to say on the subject of movies, stories, or the best way to spend two hours of one’s life.

Good God, what a bad, stupid, insulting movie. Seriously. Terrible script. Terrible. No story. Awful acting—and not in a fun sort of way either. No sense of pacing. Nothing fun to do with the beloved monsters of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolfman. Nothing makes sense—and not in a fun sort of way either.

Ugh. Unbelievable that this made any money at all.

Later: I posted on a mailing list more details about why this movie bugged me so much. Here’s basically what I posted (edited a bit):

(Sorry if there are any spoilers in what follows, but seriously — if
this movie can be spoiled for you, it should be.)

The movie wants to make use of the Big 3 Universal monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man. Okay, that lends itself to diluting the overall thrust, so we’ll divvy them up: one will be the good guy, one will be the bad guy, and one will be…hmmm. Something.

Dracula will be the main bad guy. It’ll turn out that he can only be killed by the Wolf Man. That’s kind of an addition to the mythology, but since other things we know about the Wolf Man—how you turn into one, for example—are the same, we’ll allow it. Also, this allows us a reason why Our Hero becomes one of the three monsters. So, while the Wolf Man isn’t good, he’s necessary to kill Dracula. Frankenstein’s Monster will be a good guy. He’s intelligent, he’s scared of Dracula, he wants to help Van Helsing.

So far, it’s okay. Nothing terrible, nothing special.

Then the movie goes off the deep end.

In Van Helsing, Dracula desperately wants to get his hands on Frankenstein’s Monster. Something about how Frankenstein’s Monster was raised is important, which is why Dracula needs to get his claws on him.

And why is that? Turns out Dracula needs the tech used to make the
Monster in order to create his offspring.

I’m sorry…what the fuck?

We all know vampire mythology — we know how Dracula makes his “children.” We know, in fact, that that’s how he does it in this movie too, because one plot point involves Dracula threatening to turn Princess Black Latex into one of his wives. So what’s all this crap with electricity and Frankenstein’s Monster and sacs of bats (seriously)…? Why was that again?

(When we saw the sacs of batlings, Darin said, “I know the queen Alien is around here somewhere.” It was that obvious a rip-off of Aliens. I responded, “What are we supposed to use, harsh language?”)

So the entire point of this movie, ostensibly to use the three stars of the horror movie canon, comes up with a stupid and completely unnecessary addition to vampire lore as the engine of the story.

Oh yes: and everything else about the movie sucked too. But it’s hard to rise above complete stupidity, so that’s not that surprising.