Richard Roeper was merely a horrible columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times until picked to replace the late Gene Siskel as Roger Ebert’s TV reviewing partner. By making this selection, Ebert successfully made sure he’d never be again challenged as the show’s top dog.
Still, it was a fortuitous moment for Roeper, who instantly became one of the nation’s most prominent (if not worthy) film critics. Now he has further cashed in by writing one of those teeny books that will make sure public libraries never go out of business. You think people really want to spend $17 (or even a discounted portion of that sum) to read Roeper’s lame brand of snark?
I was expecting the worst (and with all due respect to Mr. Roeper, Hollywood Schlock is something I know a little about), and I got it. In fact, I got it in the first paragraph of the book’s introduction, which reads as follows:
“Every movie fan knows these truths to be self-evident: Chris Rock and Vin Diesel are movie stars. The most successful movie of all time was Titantic. Every critic in the nation panned Gigli. Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek have never made a movie together. Winning the Golden Globe is the next best thing to taking home an Academy Award. Pretty Woman made far more money than The Graduate. Accepting Best Actor honors for Philidelphia Tom Hanks made one of the greatest Oscar speeches of all time.”
Unsurprisingly, Roeper then proceeds to show his superiority by proving these apparently universal precepts incorrect.
The problem, of course, is that the list seems false to start with. Chris Rock is not much of a movie star and never has been, Vin Diesel is hanging on to that superlative by his fingernails. Titanic is the most successful movie of all time in terms of money made, but anyone who knows anything knows that something like, say, Gone With the Wind has sold many more tickets. ‘Everybody’ panned Gigli would be acknowledged by most people as an exaggeration, as generally nothing is hated by each and every person who sees it. The Golden Globes are generally viewed as a joke except for the people who give them out and those who get them. I doubt if most “movie fans,” much less “all,” feel so conversant with Crowe and (especially) Hayek’s filmographies to make such a weirdly specific claim. For Pretty Woman as compared to The Graduate, as with Titanic, yes, inflation must be taken into account. Finally, does anyone anywhere really care enough about the Oscars to make a claim about ‘best’ speeches?
Anyway, Roeper proceeds to blow our minds by debunking these universally help precepts. Wow! And the manner in which he does this is as bad as the list is to start with.
Neither Rock nor Diesel, he argues, “has turned in a single performance worthy of the “movie star” tag.” Well, that’s not what most people mean by the term ‘movie star.’ If Rock and Diesel are not movie stars, its because at this point they don’t draw large audiences to films they star in.
Crowe and Hayek “actually did make a movie together. It’s just that nobody saw it.” I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed when Richard Roeper pointed out that these two did make a movie together. Wow.
Titanic and Pretty Woman: Inflation, blah blah.
Gigli: “…a few critics actually praised the film.” Wow, another mind-blower.
“The Golden Globes? A golden crock.” That ‘joke’ alone would have had me punching Roeper in the nose on sight had I actually bought his book with my own money. Besides, this one is probably true, although I guess Roeper doesn’t get that the Oscars are just as much of a ‘crock’ as the Golden Globes.
“…read the transcript [of Hanks’ Oscar speech] and you’ll realize the man was…babbling.” So? If people remember his speech (and that’s Roeper’s assertion in the first place) and were affected by it, then you could easily argue it was one of the “greatest” Oscar Speeches. Which isn’t saying that much.
Anyway, that still leaves 200+ (small) pages of the wit & wisdom of Richard Roeper, so don’t blame me for ruining the book.
