Shiny 'Ring' isn't quite flawless - strange title, odd review

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | December 19, 2001 | Roger Ebert

[sakic]

This most important part of the movie is whether it's entertaining.

Without good writing and good acting a movie can't be entertaining to me. In the end it all comes down to taste anyway and no one's right or wrong.

[sakic]

Thanks, and most importantly a healthy and happy 2002 to you and yours.

Geez, you really liked Armageddon?

[sakic]

Didn't Ebert write a sequel to Valley of The Dolls? Something like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls?

[sakic]

Ebert-Writer - filmography

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979) (as R. Hyde)

Up! (1976) (as Reinhold Timme)

... aka Over, Under and Up! (1976)

... aka Russ Meyer's Up (1976)

... aka Up! Smokey (1976)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) (story)

... aka Hollywood Vixens (1970)

[Pelham]

Can you imagine the reaction of almost everyone if the film had spent hours on hobbit meals

I can imagine Roger Ebert's reaction- he obviously is well acquainted with meals, and lots of them. More meals would have gained another star from Jaba the Reviewer.

[dead]

Gladiator was OK, but it was better when they called it "Ben Hur".

Near the end of the movie, it looks like Maximus is going to escape and rally his army to storm the city. I got all excited for the bango finale, but they backed off and threw in a stupid knife fight instead.

The ending was like "West Side Story" without the music.

[Physicist]

Near the end of the movie, it looks like Maximus is going to escape and rally his army to storm the city. I got all excited for the bango finale, but they backed off and threw in a stupid knife fight instead.

I didn't mind the knife fight, because they could in principle have worked that into Roman history (not so with a storming of the city, I'm afraid). Commodus was assassinated, so in the context of the movie they could have covered up the fight with Maximus and sold it to the public as a standard coup. But they didn't bother to conform to the historical record, even with that easy out.

Pertinax, who's he? Severus who? Grumble, gripe.

[dead]

I didn't go into it expecting even the slightest adherence to actual history, so in that sense, I wasn't disappointed.

I went looking for some great action sequences, and the ending was a complete snore. It was no Braveheart, in that sense.

[beckett]

Yes--he did some stuff with Russ Meyer, as you indicate. I forgot some of it, I admit. And I was wrong about Sweet Li'l Alice, which is not the title of a film. Sweet Li'l Alice was a character in the immortal soft-porn film which you have listed titled Up, which Ebert wrote with Russ Meyer.

In any case, I'm sure you'll agree that the sum total of his contribution to the creative arts is wholly forgettable.

[Abundy]

Yeah...call me a hopeless romantic who loves a feel-good story. Besides, Bruce Willis can do no wrong - I even own Hudson Hawk.

[sakic]

Yes, his career as a writer is uninspiring, but he hasn't done too badly for himself.

[HarryDunne]

And here is Gary Cogill's review...finally

[ThomasMore]

But some may regret that the Hobbits have been pushed out of the foreground and reduced to supporting characters.

I certainly did not see it this way. Elijah Wood was superb. And he played the role well. And Jackson's adaptation kept him in the forefront. I was actually surprised to see how much these feisty little hobbits did battle against the cave troll. Ebert is seeing something I surely don't.

[HairOfTheDog]

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