Siskel & Ebert (TV Series)

Tin Cup/House Arrest/Killer: A Journal of Murder/Alaska/Butterfly Kiss (1996)

Roger Ebert: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Roger Ebert - Host : "House Arrest" is one of the most ungainly, unfunny, and unnecessary movies I've seen in a long while. I can easily imagine how it might have been funny to lock all the parents in the basement, but only if you wanted to do something clever and original with them instead of having them bluster and posture through an endless series of predictable gags and tired dialogue. Make the parents smart, make the kids smart, make it more real, and you might've had something. This is a real tired formula movie without one ounce of daring.

  Gene Siskel - Host : It was REALLY tough to sit through this picture. This, this is really bad filmmaking, and I don't even know if the concept could have worked. In other words, if you have kids, I assume this picture is made for kids. Certainly, parents don't want to see a picture...

  Roger Ebert - Host : No, no.

  Gene Siskel - Host : ...About parents being locked in- especially quarrelsome parents.

  Roger Ebert - Host : No.

  Gene Siskel - Host : So if it's about kids, what do they want to do? They want to put the parents in the basement, and then go have fun themselves, right?

  Roger Ebert - Host : I guess, yeah. They don't want to see the parents downstairs fighting.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Y'know, make it "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for everybody in the neighborhood, if you will, but NO ONE wants to see unhappy parents trapped in a small space!

  Roger Ebert - Host : Especially kids. That's just what you want to see when you're ten years old, right? A movie about parents who want to get a divorce. That's JUST what you'd like to see.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Terrible.

• Roger Ebert - Host : "Alaska" belongs to a genre, I guess you could call "kids on a quest in the wilderness", and I hope it doesn't inspire its young audiences to try and make friends with the bears at Yellowstone next summer. But the movie is beautifully photographed and acted in a convincing, straightforward way by the young stars, and on its own level, I enjoyed it. I imagine it's targeted at kids up to about thirteen, and I think a lot of them are gonna enjoy it.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Well first of all, Roger, I think this, you know how you always say to me: "You missed the boat on this one"? You missed the HARBOR. This is, I think, one of the most laughably bad pictures I've seen in a long time.

  Roger Ebert - Host : I-incredible. How can you say that?

  Gene Siskel - Host : Be- I'll say h-how. The father is in a plane wreck.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yeah.

  Gene Siskel - Host : He's far away. Now, the whole story develops with them and the bear cub and all that. Do you know that the word "father", I clocked this, the word "father", and this is the movie, not other research... the c- the word "father" is not mentioned for forty minutes in this picture.

  Roger Ebert - Host : So what?

  Gene Siskel - Host : They're not talking or acting remotely...

  Roger Ebert - Host : YOU ONLY THINK...

  Gene Siskel - Host : ...Remotely like kids who've lost their father and trying to find them. Not at all.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Your criticism of this movie is utterly irrelevant to the experience...

  Gene Siskel - Host : No no no.

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...Of the film on the screen, and would be meaningless to anyone seeing the film.

  Gene Siskel - Host : You mean you wouldn't, you would be, it wasn't meaningless to ME. I saw it.

  Roger Ebert - Host : You're imagining a totally different picture that should've done something else.

  Gene Siskel - Host : No no no, what? Be remotely realistic?

  Roger Ebert - Host : Would you...

  Gene Siskel - Host : How about this?

  Roger Ebert - Host : Would you have liked it better if there was more talk about the father instead of the stuff about the bear cub?

  Gene Siskel - Host : Uh, SOME talk should've been about the father. And how about this? The plane is plainly visible where it's wrecked. And there are passers by...

  Roger Ebert - Host : It obviously ISN'T plainly visible to the search plane, that's why it didn't find it.

  Gene Siskel - Host : No, it is plainly visible to the search plane that would be a normal search plane...

  Roger Ebert - Host : You gotta, you didn't give, you didn't give your sympathy to this movie...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Roger, you...

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...You're just sitting there nitpicking.

  Gene Siskel - Host : ..., when you describe- I'm not nitpicking, major story, and the acting...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Well, I'm sure a lot of ten year old kids are gonna be saying, "Gee, they didn't, uh..."

  Gene Siskel - Host : And now, Roger, you focused on my third point, and that's this: You seem to be reviewing this picture, and I've seen it other times, of what kids will think, and I want to remind you of something...

  Roger Ebert - Host : I enjoyed it too, Gene, and I enjoyed Charlton Heston, to get ahead of you here. I thought that kind of stuff was funny in a satiric way. He's playing against type.

  Gene Siskel - Host : I just want you to say that YOU really enjoyed it yourself.

  Roger Ebert - Host : I enjoyed this movie.

  [to camera] 

  Roger Ebert - Host : I enjoyed this movie.