Siskel & Ebert (TV Series)

Beverly Hills Cop II/Amazing Grace and Chuck/Ishtar/The Chipmunk Adventure (1987)

Gene Siskel: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Roger Ebert - Host : [reviewing "Beverly Hills Cop II"]  This movie is high-tech, assembly line, movie-making by the numbers. It has no creativity, it has no acting, it has no humor...

  Gene Siskel - Host : If they hire him, why don't they let him...

  Roger Ebert - Host : That's right.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Hire him, use him.

  Roger Ebert - Host : This movie could've, you could've plugged anybody into this movie. And it would've been just as bad. Next movie. Our next movie is an idealistic fantasy named "Amazing Grace and Chuck". Maybe I'll calm down a little bit now, this is a, more of a calmer movie.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Well, but you get ticked off because the guy is a star...

  Roger Ebert - Host : That's right.

  Gene Siskel - Host : ...And they misuse him completely.

  Roger Ebert - Host : You're trashing him. Another four like this, and Eddie Murphy is gonna be in the same bag that Stallone is, uh, with movies like "Over the Top" and, uh, "Cobra". They're just gonna, they're gonna compartmentalize him. They're gonna take what's special about him and throw it out and turn him into just another ordinary assembly line action star.

  Gene Siskel - Host : We're still angry.

  Roger Ebert - Host : [to camera]  Eddie Murphy is a COMEDIAN! He's not a violent action star! Don't trash him that way! Now, the next movie. What did I say it was? "Amazing Grace and Chuck".

  Gene Siskel - Host : Still upset.

• Roger Ebert - Host : [reviewing "The Chipmunk Adventure"]  The movie finds time for several Chipmunk musical numbers in which the little beasts sing in their irritating little squeaky high-pitched chipmunk voices

  [imitating the Chipmunks] 

  Roger Ebert - Host : until you're just about ready to go crazy!

  [normal voice] 

  Roger Ebert - Host : The animation in this movie is better than the Saturday morning TV assembly line cartoon, but not by much.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Oh...

  Roger Ebert - Host : And the story is dumb and predictable from beginning to end. Why couldn't the Chipmunks have had a real fantastical adventure, a real magical world, maybe, instead of getting involved in a stolen jewelry caper that seems recycled out of TV crime shows? That's a problem, and so are those chirping, twerpy little voices. I couldn't stand them the first time I heard them twenty years ago, I STILL can't stand them! They haven't gotten ANY better! And in this movie, they really got, y'know, it's kind of, "fingernails on the blackboard" time every time they sing.

  Gene Siskel - Host : In other words, you wanted surgery on the script and on their vocal chords.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yes, both.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Uh, I think that, uh... yeah, they're aggravating. I mean, who wants to be in their presence?

  [Roger laughs] 

  Gene Siskel - Host : I mean, they are absolutely aggravating. I don't know that kids will think it's cute. Uh, the whole thing of the girls suddenly launching into becoming a rock and roll band...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yeah.

  Gene Siskel - Host : ...Is RIGHT out of Saturday morning TV.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yes.

  Gene Siskel - Host : And so even, I think, your gratuitous little, uh, remark, gratuitous compliment, tiny compliment that it's better than Saturday morning TV, be very careful about that, because some studio might want to use it in the ads. This is just as bad as Saturday morning TV.