Siskel & Ebert (TV Series)

Larger Than Life/Unhook the Stars/Romeo+Juliet/Dear God/Vertigo (1996)

Roger Ebert: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Gene Siskel - Host : [reviewing "Larger Than Life"]  I appreciate him

  [Bill Murray] 

  Gene Siskel - Host : for doing his own stunts, and I enjoyed his constant befuddlement at his predicament, and the wiseacre way he tries to overcome it. "Larger Than Life" isn't the best Bill Murray comedy of the year, "Kingpin" was ten times as funny, but I still smiled enough at it to recommend it.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Well, Gene, to quote you from a couple shows ago, come ON, big guy, be a better critic, get tough. Don't give this one a pass; you don't really think it's that good.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Oh, I DO think it's funny. I think he's funny when he's alone, just talking, I mean, ordering the whole salad bar, those are big laughs. And I had a lot of them with him itself.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Well, I tell ya, I think you put your finger right on the flaw in the movie, right in the beginning, and the flaw is the elephant. I thought the original opening scenes, involving motivational speaking...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yes.

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...Were very funny.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yes.

  Roger Ebert - Host : And if had played a motivational speaker, and if they had taken motivational slogans and books...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Right.

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...And banquet speakers as their target, it would've been a totally different movie...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yes.

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...And maybe a funny one. As for the elephant...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Well, now to quote YOU, of course, review the movie that they made.

  Roger Ebert - Host : I AM reviewing the movie they made,

  [Gene chuckles] 

  Roger Ebert - Host : and it has too much, too many pachyderms in it.

  Gene Siskel - Host : I know, that's what I always want to say to you, Roger...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yeah, uh-huh.

  Gene Siskel - Host : ...Of COURSE we're reviewing the movie that was made when we're offering an alternative.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Okay, fine.

  Gene Siskel - Host : And the point is, uh, that the elephant isn't funny, but Murray IS, and he's on the- he's in the film constantly, so therefore, I'm, I'm not being soft, he made me laugh.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Well, he didn't make me laugh enough to give it thumbs up.

• Roger Ebert - Host : [reviewing "Romeo+Juliet"]  Thumbs WAY down for me, I think this movie is a complete mess. I know something was terribly wrong when the balcony scene pays off by them falling into the swimming pool and doing most of the great lines of that scene while treading water. That was a mistake. There were two problems with Shakespeare's language in this film: Half of it, they shout, half of it, they mumble. None of it do they really comprehend or deliver in an intelligible way. The only actor in the movie who really gets Shakespeare's language across is Pete Postlethwaite, playing Friar Laurence, or Father Laurence, as he's called here. He knows how to say the language. Claire Danes is a wonderful presence on screen, Leonardo DiCaprio, we've praised many times.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Right.

  Roger Ebert - Host : These people are not Shakespearean actors, and they don't do even a little bit of what, for example, the cast of Zeffirelli's "Romeo & Juliet" did in 1968.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Roger, you, you liked NOTHING?

  Roger Ebert - Host : I think this movie is pretty much uh, a missed opportunity.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Obviously, we differ.