Siskel & Ebert - Worst of 1989 

Oh wow, oh no 😅lol 😂

Ha ha .. that's exactly what I was thinking while watching before looking at the comments.... Woody Allen, one of the untouchable Hollywood pieces of trash. All the evidence is out there .. wanna guess why he'll never be brought to justice for it? Open Letter from Dylan Farrow ...

😂😂😂

My jaw dropped ! What a moment !

This was the comment I was looking for.😅

Have no illusions, humanity will never forgive you.

I liked the Music in the Film. I guess the Movie existed as a Kind of long Music Video Clip for different Australian Bands. I liked it when I was young. Great Southern Land became one of my favourites.

We'll forgive 'Young Einstein' if your government eases up on Lockdown mandates... how bout that.

Don’t worry. We as a nation said no to Yahoo Serious

You gave us mad max, your debts been repaid

I'd forgotten all about that guy

The Glove! So bad it’s truly a stinnnnnker!😂

Weird right?

I'd say the first 15 minutes of Harlem Nights is hilarious. Its when the weak plot kicks in is where it kinda flounders.

I remember liking it enough but that was a long time ago.

There are much worse Eddie Murphy films. It isn't that bad

'80s ego inflation was outta control!

Nah-Tendo. The way parents said that always showed you how out of touch they were. But today, parents play games right alone with their kids!

I was 10 years old when I saw The Wizard and I remember really liking it.

Ebert was in love with the sound of his own voice.

We play Videogames with our kids now because WE were those '80s Nintendo kids ourselves! (I think we'll all be playing modded Minecraft together for the forseeable future, it's already been 10 GREAT, fun years!) (....It's essentially 21st Century Lego!)

I liked that, too.

I am Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune

Good chemistry to help gene out there

As though we don't all know by that point, they'd been on TV nearing 20 years by 1989 _"Who's THIS guy??"_

I saw an interview recently (not of Eastwood) saying that every other profession the people get better with experience, but in Hollywood they're expected to have some failures in their careers, making some bad movies. Of course, art is very subjective and also manipulated by those who expect to make money by formula.

That's my experience with "The Interpreter". I was 10 years old (I watched it on TV) and I was smitten by both the story and Nicole Kidman, obviously but I didn't think much about the plot because, you know, I was ten and I was smitten by all the pretty pictures. The movie is on TV once more during the pandemic and my god, what a bore that movie was.

Unfortunately, too many people nowadays refuse to admit what they liked as a child was really garbage.

That's been his pattern, though. Murphy would make something good and interesting, but then follow it up with something God awful. Then he'd win audiences back, and then squander the good will just as fast. Either he'd pick a terrible project or put his foot in his mouth. Or both.

He's still correct

He probably was predicting Eddie's future? Cause he was coming off of Beverly Hills Cop 2 and Coming to America which were monster box office hits. Unfortunately it did begin with Harlem Nights were his star started to fall until Nutty Professor then by the 2000's the movies you mentioned happened! 😔 Thank goodess for Dolomite! 😊

Eddie made a quiet little movie called Mr Church. I thing it is his best work. Surprisingly, it's not a comedy.

I ❤ Harlem Nights and so does everyone I know! Can’t imagine it not being loved

It’s so bad.

@@endymallorn Us '80s kids in 1989: "Haha, he said 'It's so bad', he's trying to be all cool by using slang." Us formerly-'80s kids as full grown adults: "Oh no, it wasn't slang at all, it was an actual warning that nobody our then-age would admit was true until after our Christmas wish lists had maybe been fulfilled and we actually tried to use the piece of crap." The only good thing that came of it, aside from some weird fuzzy yet warm memories about how advertising worked so well on us as youths, was that (I've been told) apparently some tech from it eventually went into Wii and Switch controllers.

@@endymallorn AVGN: And i mean baaaaaad

He was wrong about one thing... showing the games and plugging the product is the exact same thing. He made a distinction like they are totally different

Not to mention one of my favorite deaths in Freddy's Dead the Final Nightmare.

No, it’s infuriating. Every scene in the original had something going for it, a clever line, a sight gag, Bill Murray being Bill Murray etc. The sequel is just garbage. The Greek artist character is like nails on a chalkboard.

@@thefonzkiss you are like flies to vigo, sir.

Haha, fwiw, I'm not sure they were self-aware enough to get the irony, but thank you for pointing it out :)

Tom and Jerry.

Agreed. Also Burt Reynolds.

@@1RedHyena Most certainly Burt Reynolds! I think he made every year.

@@saxongreen78 Someone should go through all of these and tally up who shows up the most. You know, for science. My bet is Robin Williams, based on the longevity of his career. Possibly Eddie Murphy though.

@@1RedHyena Robin Williams played _Patch Adams-_ that surely must count as an extra penalty credit...I have always hated that film based solely on the theatrical trailer. 😬

@@saxongreen78 Hahahaha! I always hated Patch Adams also, just base on the stupid poster. Robin Williams with a stupid red clown nose on his face. I agree on your tally method. One "Patch Adams" type failure is worth Two points. So then....well, we've got a lot of math to do. I believe Rob Schneider and Adam Sandler may have some solid showings in the '90's and beyond.

Ebert was a film snob.

@@danstvguy well yeah, the guy critiqued films for a living.

They bickered like a married couple 😂

@@kane4013 They were more like professional rivals, come out of old newspaper kultur? People might actually miss that. Kind of a healthy "Fuck that guy, our paper is better." Chicago Sun-Times vs. Tribune.

Yo, I love SNES drunk videos.

@@paulocorrea521 snnnnnnnneeeesssssss drunk

I am Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune

Yeah, it's a rare movie that can REALLY connect with teenage reality / truth (Like Say Anything (1989) / Breakfast Club (1985) / Over The Edge (1979) etc)

Now that they are both gone, I no longer even watch reviewers in general, nothing compares to their dynamic. Even for written reviews, I might skim the rating but Ebert was the only one I'd sit and read his entire review. Sucks they are gone. But they did burn me one time, and I have to believe they were influenced or pushed in some way, and that movie is their glowing review of Under Siege: Dark Territory. I watched that due to their review and was totally flabbergasted they could give this slop an enthusiastic thumbs up. Totally out of character.

Yes!!! Critics today really do come off as shills. Just making commercials for the studios

I don't know too much but I feel like RLM fits that niche

@@jeehoonlee5150 I hope you can find an internet RU-vid reviewer you like or agree with a lot. I like www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheTrailer

And Afterlife makes GB2 looks as brilliant as the first film.

Not quite. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad either

Same ... Still do

Disney owns the 1986-2010 material and always has, which means you'll never see a release.

Why?

@@Kruppt808 Because Disney is a rapacious, soulless, predatory corporation that no longer does anything without guarantees of enormous profit. They don't care about anything else. A program devoted to old movie reviews from dead guys would be difficult for them to monetize today because it is too far removed from the kiddie content of their streaming service and is wired to an increasingly niche market of people who care about film criticism. Which isn't their audience.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 Well said.

Oddly prescient, too.

Sane with Louis ck and that movie that never got released. It had creepy stuff relates to his sexual tastes

It was prophetic, since he married his adopted daughter

I like how Ebert opines that such a movie wouldn't be funny, and leaves it there, then Siskel brings up Woody Allen, of all possible contemporary filmmakers. 😬😳

Yep. This was going on long before we knew about it

I never seen it but my brother was crazy about that movie he seen it about 50 times

@@BigDave50 its a really funny movie. This was the kind of movie Shelley long should have done

I'm a big fan of Jenny Lewis's music career, but wouldn't watch this film even to see her as a child :) Her music video for "She's Not Me" is apparently chock full of references to the movie.

I loved that movie when I was a kid.

I loved it as a kid and still really enjoy it now. But they have a point that it could have been a TV movie and no one would have noticed the difference. Hope it never gets rebooted.

I remember hearing about a 2018 movie called _Blockers_ about parents freaking out about their daughters wanting to have sex.

@@sandal_thong8631 omg I remember that

@@sandal_thong8631 Blockers is a great movie actually. The movie knows that the moral panic is an overreaction and treats all six of its leads with respect.

No doubt there's always been crud. But if you DO want great flicks nowadays you have to search FAAR away from Hollywood studioland products. They ARE out there though! 😸_👍

Yeah that aged like fine milk.

It's totally different now

Their heads would explode if they saw that movie theaters are all but obsolete

Well, today, generally speaking, Hollywood is just nothing but a factory of trash

What an original thought.

There still are great movies made now. It's just *none* of 'em are made by Hollywood anymore......They've become a corporatized nightmare. You have to look further afield nowadays, but at the same time doing that has never been easier!

Yeah, it has its moments. And, if nothing else, the Statue of Liberty bit was awesome, and Peter MacNichol basically steals every scene he's in. The big problem is that it's too sanitized. Because Ghostbusters became so popular with kids, it's a borderline kid's movie, even though the original was written for adults. So the tone feels off. (Also, the theme song was completely overlooked/underrated at the time, and I'm glad it was eventually recognized as a banger.)

Its biggest problem was that it was pretty much a throw together movie. They didn't put anywhere near as much planning into it as they did the original.

Yeah your right it's much worst it's as bad as Terminator woke fate. Ghostbusters reboot tried hard to push feminism try even insulted the fan base. Then they made a Ghostbusters 3 which was good

I was 7 in 1989 and wanted nothing more than to be a Ghostbuster. The sequel was everything to me. I loved it unconditionally. A Ghostbusters cereal box would send a joyous electricity through my body. If I were to watch it for the first time today, it would border on being a derivative, charmless piece of shit. But those goggles of nostalgia are mighty powerful, and I still love it, despite its glaring faults.

I think I may have seen Ghostbusters II at the theatre, but I have no memories of the experience.

Little Monsters was a funny one.

And he became a Perv

He was best in austin powers

@@LordSathar the mole

@@LordSathar Mole^

Agreed. I actually don't think it's any better or worse than the original, and neither one is anything special. Those movies work primarily because of Bill Murray's improvising.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 couldn’t disagree more. Ghostbusters 1 worked because of the ensemble. Yes, Murray is the one liner king but to say that Akroyd, Ramis, Moranis or Annie Potts didn’t add to that first film which broke new ground as not recognizing the ensemble. As for part 2, it was awful. The villain wasn’t as interesting and the finale with the Statue of Liberty was just asinine.

@@ClaraMBreen I can't quibble with the casting, but I don't think they were given much to do or say that was very funny. Moranis certainly created a unique character (he's vastly underrated in general) but he doesn't have enough screen time in either film to satisfy me. I recall reading that Bill Murray was deeply dissatisfied with the quality of the scripts for both films and ad-libbed most of his lines. I think it shows, and both movies would be rather dull without him.

Only thing I remember about this movie was the Titanic scene.

I never saw Ghostbusters 2 mainly because of clips from the film I saw on Siskel & Ebert’s show. It didn’t look right for a comedy, especially for one that had very high caliber SNL alumni like Akroyd and Murray in it. Bill Murray doesn’t like being in sequels and I can completely understand why.

Don’t feel too bad. Hulkamania and the WWF were a phenomenon in the 80s. You had no choice as a kid

Haha, Me too. My wrestling fan uncle took me and we loved it.

yep, me too. i'd forgotten it before watching this vid though

They got some hits wrong. Maybe a couple years after this they changed their minds.

I think more are, but there is more money in streaming and television. Now tehre is SO much content out there its harder to find originality. Amazing that with three networks adn relatively few movies coming out they STILL found it h ard to be original.

They've got to take risks and risk failure. But at $30 million for a movie like John Wick, who's going to pony up the money?

I haven't seen either, but to be fair, he did do The Princess Bride.

In the case of The Wizard, the crime of that movie was more that it was basically just a lot of product placement for Nintendo and Universal Studios.

I remember seeing the wizard in the theater walking right past the little mermaid to see it instead, but plot wise I couldn't tell you a thing about it anymore. I loved hearing Siskel saying Fred Savage can turn down lousy scripts, but should a child be expected to have the kind of refinement of taste to differentiate a terrible film from a better one? Honestly, this criticism is beyond absurd. What I can imagine is a young Fred Savage and all of his young friends loved Nintendo games, got offered a chance to be in a movie all about Nintendo games, and was sold on it immediately, no questions asked.

@@nosilverharbinger I agree with your assessment 100%. I would have been quite happy to be in The Wizard, even as an extra. I was 9 in 1989.

To be fair, most child actors bemoan the fact they are treated like kids. Chris Columbus gets directing jobs JUST because he is good with child actors and most of them say he 'treats us like adults'-which may be just what they THINK adults are treated like. In this case I think Savage is old enough to take it for what its worth - look carefully at scripts, but lets be fair, actors ALWAYS routinely say that almost ALL the scripts they ever see are garbage. So name the movie needing a 12 year old boy that came out that year that he turned down. Because if he isn't even the star of the movie then its not like his name is going to get a movie made. So you take what you can get.

Eh, I like it

GB2 is Citizen Kane compared to the 2016 Reboot.

@@sadboi7537 absolutely

GB 2 is a great film ... That reboot was shockingly horrible. They took a legendary franchise and turned it into a "look at us quirky girls" flick made for wine drunk 30 somethings.

I'm very forgiving of older films. I will commend GB2 for being ahead of it's time awful - they only make bad movies like that now. It paved the way for the awfulness we have now. Remember it made way less than 1/2 of the 1st film. Then again so did Back to the future 2&3 - which are nearly as good as the original.

I never respect any movie critic,it’s a useless job

Which critics have you followed since? And why dont you respect them?

They were brilliant!

I think the video games were made after the movie or concurrently. One in the arcade was good, but others not so much.

@@sandal_thong8631 As I understand it, the original Tron arcade game was made slightly after the movie, and the movie's cult status today is attributed in part to the arcade game being so good. I can't comment on most of the later Tron games, haven't played 'em, though I will go to bat for Tron 2.0 on the PC. Yeah, the weapon selection was bog-standard and it was harder than it needed to be, but it had a lot of love for the source material. Also, some of that game's plot points got reused in the "Tron Legacy" movie, which was pretty darn good in its own right :)

more like film rants. lol. the biggest problem I have with them is they don't take the film for what it is. They had a tendency to inject their own moral views when judging films. A critic really shouldn't do this. A film critic should always judge movies as is and not what you want them to be. I did like some of their reviews though. They had some good moments and some not so good moments, sometimes they would get mad at each other when they disagreed on a film. That was always kind of funny.

Almost lost? Most of these moronic so-called "reviewers" don't even watch the movies anymore.

Actually, the Critical Drinker on youtube is just as good as these guys were.

​@@EugeniaLolino he aint

I thought that's what he said- ha ha! :)

I am Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune

“Cult classic” doesn’t always mean actually good.

@@RocStarr913 Actually "cult classic" usually means it was critically or universally panned when it's first released, but eventually picks up a growing audience through video tape or dvd (or streaming, nowadays). So most "cult" movies are in fact "bad" movies during their time.

I recall Ebert separately writing a bad review for UHF, but from what I can tell, didn't dislike it enough for a "worst of" list. I'm part of that cult, but sometimes with comedy you see a generational or cultural divide. One department where I worked a few years ago, quipping that movie was like our secret handshake, but I noticed that people born before and after a certain interval didn't seem to dig it so much.

Weird Al retaliated by including the lyric "Those Siskel and Ebert bums can just go home and sit on their thumbs" in his parody of U Can't Touch This called I Can't Watch This (from his Off The Deep End album). Guess he was a little bitter about that!

@@davidl570 Missed that one, but in all honesty I think critical reviews are negligible to the fate of vehicles like UHF. Your decision to watch it most likely hinged on how much you liked Weird Al. If you were a fan, you watched it, probably liked or loved it, and if he wasn't your cup of tea, you skipped it. I know I personally didn't read a review until about 10 years later, once online review archives were available.

The chick who played the girlfriend in that movie had some big bountiful beautiful boobs ... that scene with her in that dance leotard in the gym ... Hubba Hubba

Nah. Dream a Little Dream was *stylish* , I'd give it that. But dead from the neck up with Feldman as the lead.

I, on the other hand, was blown away. It was original and a lot of fun. But I do remember a lot of people not liking it.

I remember trying to watch it as a kid in the 90’s and being so bored I had to turn it off

I absolutely adore Tron, but sometimes I do put it on if I'm trying to sleep. It's weirdly soothing for a movie about being trapped in a computer and fighting programs

Yeah, pretty depressing to see how many of these trends are still going as strong or stronger 30 years on.

Simple solution. Stop looking at box office receipts as a measure of quality. Stop going to the multiplex where the same superhero movie is playing in 22 of the 26 screens. Patronize a local indie film cinema house. There are plenty great studio driven indie-adjacent films out there to be seen. The more people go to them, the more will be made.

​@@Hexon66ok, hippie

There's no way they could match that super-hit, but they tried and I liked it. The only thing that fell flat was the gay joke about Vigo.

​@@sandal_thong8631there is a way as Godfather proved

​@@sandal_thong8631don't be such a prude why don't ya

It came off like a macho man slim Jim commercial lmao

Watching 98 minutes of actual vintage Nintendo commercials is more entertaining.

Yeah what a miscalculation...nobody--kids, parents, ad-men, gamers--cared about the hour-and-a-half preceding the footage of Mario 3. It's fine to make a 90-minute ad for a blockbuster NES game but it's no good making a boring crappy movie.

Fortuitously so. I suggest watching their original reviews of those two films. Gene Siskel was so sickened by the experience of sitting through "She's Out of Control" that he claimed on television to have given serious consideration to quitting his job. But then he saw "Say Anything" either the same day or later that week and it renewed his faith in the medium.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 I remember that, luckily Say Anything ended up on HBO the next year.

I remember Roger’s review of She’s Out of Control going something like “Life is short and what the makers of this film did was steal 90 minutes of my life and gave me less than nothing in return. “

Film is all about story and shatner was terrible

@@stevejohnson1577 If movies were "all about story" they'd be audiobooks or slideshows of script pages.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 not saying all about story... but common, if there isnt, there better be something that hold interest. I love Star Trek, but most of their movies suck. Shatner's hairpiece is a better story than Star Trek 5

@@stevejohnson1577 There hasn't been a good Trek movie since The Undiscovered Country. The TNG movies sucked and the Kelvin universe films are bad Star Wars movies.

I fkng Love the Final Frontier. Yes its TERRIBLE but in a good way. Shatners hearr was in the right place.lol

Karate kid 3 had Silver in it!

I saw Ghostbusters II twice at the local drive during the summer of 1989 and enjoyed immensely both times. Sure, it has some flaws, but I have seen much worse squeals in my time. Also, I think that when GB2 first came out people forgot that many things changed in terms of the story (the cast had to do reshoots midway through filming, including a new ending from what Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis originally wrote) and due to Columbia Pictures having forced a really tight filming schedule on the cast and crew there was not much time to fine tune the movie before it opened. Heck the special effects team had to work around the clock literally to complete the effects on time.

A female Ghostbuster wasn't the problem. Having Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon as the main cast was.

Any movie is first and foremost the writing, end of story. Ghostbusters itself was very rushed, thats why the effects look so cheesy compared to other movies out at that time. To be honest I 'was in the room' when my wife watched 'answer the call' and it TRIED to put in far more jokes and be funnier than ANY other Ghostbusters movie. What they missed is that Ghostbusters wasn't actually a full on comedy, so people really got pissed when they messed with the characters. A lot of people especiallyin america tend to take characters more seriously than people. That last Ghostbusters was not funny hardly at all, but got great reviews, in large part because it 'respected the characters' and 'respected the spirit of the original'. Actors themselves have no such respect, which is why Bill Murray agreed to get killed in ATC and why he WANTED to get killed in the Ghostbusters sequel. Some of that rubbed off in the sequel because people of course assumed Bill and Sigourney 'got together' and the in the sequel it was "oh no they didnt". Thats an interesting way that the audience tried to control Hollywood, and its partly why virtually EVERY Hollywood movie has the exact same ending. There are a few standouts, I remember seeing "To live and die in LA" and one cop you think is the star gets killed at the very beginning, then the other cop partner who is in the whole movie gets killed at the end and thats always stuck in my mind becaues its SO rare, but its not like I watch every movie.

Ghostbusters II was successful and enjoyable, though maybe it couldn't match the excitement of the first movie. I've been thinking about how Star Wars might have been different if all those little decisions were made differently, like if they hadn't killed Obi-Wan or they did kill Darth Vader (who didn't get a lot of screen time and wasn't that important). Then _The Empire Strikes Back_ wouldn't have needed Yoda, and there'd be no Darth Vader! Heck, maybe we wouldn't have gotten Billy Dee Williams, but Ricardo Montalban might have played Lando? Instead of being the greatest sequel of all time (until _Avengers: Endgame) it would have been a cluster and could have been the end of the series.

The Old Gringo was Jane Fonda.

Sometimes Ebert and Siskel just miss the point - IIRC Ebert wanted to rate the original Death Race 2000 as a zero and seemed to miss the silly dark humour. Of course DR2000 went on to become possibly THE cult movie

Nope. No energy. Mosty just vulgar

Here in the UK Pink Cadillac went straight to rental VHS, an unheard of fate for an Eastwood picture. He really turned things around from the depths

@@ianfryer8386 That's interesting to know.

Its moments

@@Wellch Thank you.

true. the first 30 minutes was gold. then it drags its way with only 2 more funny scenes the rest of the way.

@@TariqBusy That's actually a decent assessment.

They missed the boat, criticizing the 9th-highest grossing movie of the year. It's impossible to recapture lightning in a bottle, but this made a good attempt by bringing back the entire cast, including supporting characters and not just trying to reboot it. In other words I liked it. You can even see how Janine's hair was styled after the popular animated version!

It's a shit movie. Unfunny and forgettable

Bronson making that guy eat a watch was equally awesome.

And I'll die right next to you.....Next Of Kin is one of my favorites

Road House at least has the advantage of camp value. It doesn't take itself seriously. Roger even kinda enjoyed it and came close to recommending it.

Next of Kin was terribler and much more boring- a dud- Road House may be objectively bad but also quite entertaining 😅with standouts from Kelly lynch and Sam Elliot.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, DAD!

“ Gaadam that hurts doesn’t it”

@@donaldpaluga “If you’re gonna have a pet, keep it on a leash.”

Lucky you.

Your co-worker was right.

the worst of the first cast

As a general rule, if you haven't already seen the original cast ST movies, just skip the odd numbered ones and see the evens.

@@75aces97 , you got it pegged!

Lots of great films came out in 1989: Tim Burton's Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Back to the Future 2, Lethal Weapon 2, The Little Mermaid

@@hv3115 You just proved the point. Except for Last Crusade, the rest was rubbish.

Nonsense. Looking back I count ~24 good movies that year suitable for screen or rental. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_in_film I think I haven't seen _Born on the Fourth of July,_ but saw all the top 10 and a dozen other good ones.

​@@CrazyMazapanclearly not

One is a rotted corpse and the other is a pile of ashes so that'd be some trick.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 oh, so i guess they are together in some respect

@@flaccidusminimus2170 They could give Will Siskel and Chaz Ebert their own show

@@bobbya9722 Neither of them are critics so that would be pretty stupid.

@@flaccidusminimus2170 I wasn't being serious

They got alot of good movies wrong as well so even supposedly untainted opinions, they were still hit and miss.

And it's more about the craft and the films and not about themselves, their brand, their Twitter, etc.

They at least liked movies. The reviewer for the Washington Post hated movies, and I gather would rather have been going to the Kennedy Center or Wolftrap.

Finally. All the other comments were about how much they loved it. I saw it in the theater and was so disappointed. These old guys wanted to talk about death and gods too much, when they could have done social commentary like TOS.

Every other (Shatner era) Star Trek movie was terrible. Star Trek 1: shite Star Trek 2: good Star Trek 3: shite Star Trek 4: good Star Trek 5: shite Star Trek 6: good Btw Star Trek 3 was the worst of all. Leonard Nemoy directed and the effort was Hall of Shame worthy.

Star Trek 1 was so boring.