Don't read me first!

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I feel that you have every right to walk out on a movie. Life is short, and shouldn't be wasted watching a single minute more of a bad movie than necessary.

On the other hand, I can't honestly say that I haven't seen movies which didn't get better after the first eight minutes. Kiss Of The Spider Woman was boring all the way through, up until the terrific ending. I've seen movies where actors' performances improved noticeably over the course of the film (probably as they settle into the character over months of shooting). Is the first 8 minutes "enough" to condemn the rest of a film?

For me, maybe yes. For you, the critic, who gets paid to discover that for me, I think maybe not?

As for whether you should have revealed your walkout earlier in the review; I think you were right to stick to the flow of prose that you did. The review reads better, is more entertaining, and actually made me wonder how the film was able to cram all eight failures into the first eight minutes. Did it go for one a minute, or was it more rapid fire, leaving you realing for the remaining seven? I guess I'll never know.

After reading that you watched only eight minutes of the movie, I was even more impressed by how much amateurish filmmaking you discovered. It was structurally the right decision to write your review this way, and not a bit dishonest. While I certainly do not agree with all your reviews (but love to read them regardless) I will consider Tru Loved one to avoid.

A small point, but maybe a hyperlink to the "Tru Loved" review is in order.

(And since you're behind one of my favorite blogs for actual reading, I won't accept the "newspaper man" defense.)

Ebert: Why should I provide a hyperlink to a review I advised you to read before reading the blog? YIKES! It just occurred to me that some readers may link directly to the blog and not even realize I have a web site! There is a link to it on the top right 0f the blog page.

I must admit that I think you made the wrong decision by reviewing it. It is an entertaining review, but a 100-minute movie deserves more of a chance than just 8 minutes. I have seen movies whose first ten-fifteen minutes have made me feel uneasy, but that I gradually grew to enjoy (for me, "Superbad" and "Into the Wild" are two recent examples).
And anyway, writing a one-star review of an indie like "Tru Loved" that's only playing in one theatre, and then admitting you only watched the first eight minutes, seems like kicking a movie when it's down. What's the point?

I think you have every right to review what you've seen thus far. I am a true believer of giving a movie no more than fifteen minutes to prove itself. In most cases am so intrigued (even if it is a train wreck) that I stay just to see what happens in the next scene. With some movies, I can decide in the opening credits how much I'll like the movie. Most times my assumption is right. Other times, I'm pleasently surprised. While studying at Fordham in NY, I learned that a film should grab you in the first seven minutes. First impressions mean a lot and seven minutes is a long time for a first impression.

LOL! You're not a very stunt-y guy, but THIS is a great stunt. Very thought-provoking. Love ya, man.

I don't blame you, I saw the trailer a few weeks ago and began to wonder how movies like this get to be released. How many levels of "ok's" do they have to go through before these terrible pictures get made and put into theaters?

I did notice that 2/3 of the reviews so far on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, so maybe it's not as bad as we think.

Roger: Unfortunately, the review reminds me of too many times when I tried in school to write a book review after having only read the first chapter.

I understand that you need not have to sit through an excruciating film - life being too short - but you probably spent twice as long reviewing it as you did watching it. Then at least as long again writing your journal entry. Even longer reading our reviews of your non-review review.

Watching the whole mess would probably have saved you time. In future, I'd advice against printing reviews of films too boring to finish.

All I can think to do is ask: Right now, pick between watching "Tru Loved" all the way through and watching "Caligula" all the way through.

When I was younger I would never walk out of a movie. Now that I am older and presumably wiser I feel the pull to walk you a lot more, but still have yet to do it. But i makes sense.
Why not walk out? There are so many more movies to slog through than in the past. I think you should walk out more. Question: Would you ever walk out of an actual hollywood film? One with name actors, directors, etc. Or does your newspapers forbid that? Is it only indy films that can get this treatment?

Ebert: If a Sun-Times critic walks out on a performance and conceals it, he or she is faced with real big trouble. The paper has no separate policies re Hollywood or indie films. I estimate I have sat through 0.99975 percent of all the movies I have seen. Boy, do I like the little calculator that came with my computer.

I certainly approve of the decision, which is yours to make, and of the approach to revealing it. That said, the experiment will not be complete until you finish the movie and reveal your thoughts.

I think that when a movie betrays us like this one, we must walk out. I do suppose that I was a little taken bothered when you wrote that you walked out after eight minutes, but sometimes that's all it takes. I think that the only problem that I may have with this whole idea is that you still wrote a review, but as you said - "whatever you saw, whatever you felt, whatever you did, you must say so," so under this philosophy, you had to write a truthful review. It would bother me more if it became a habit for a critic to do this sort of thing, but I don't see that happening.Of course, you now open up yourself to people saying that after the first eight minutes, it picks up and becomes a brilliant work of art, but I think that after all these years, you know a little better than that.

I remember a wonderful date I had a few years back. It finally felt right for the relationship to consummate. But I was pretty clueless and nervous, and the first eight minutes or so seemed pretty demoralizing. Then things picked up considerably, once the rhythm of the inner person took over. The date ended, well, pretty wonderfully, and up to this day I have never remembered those eight minutes... just the last 90.

The real question is this: why are you wasting so much time and energy on what is clearly garbage? Move on and add "Hud (1963)" to your great movies collection while you're at it!

You know Roger, very few critics could get away with with reviewing 8 minutes of a movie without damaging their credibility. Fortunately there is no such danger here as your reputation is (in my opinion) above reproach. That said, I did check out the few other reviews of "Tru Loved" at Rottentomatoes, and they were no more informative and far less entertaining than yours. You may not have enjoyed your 8 minutes watching, I but I certainly enjoyed my 2 minutes reading! Thanks from a longtime reader, first time poster.

Roger, of all the things I've respected about you and your work for many years, perhaps the most important is your honesty. You have an innate respect for the relationship between a critic and his readership--give us the straight scoop, and we will take your counsel under advisement. (Even your most negative reviews haven't kept me from entering a few of the wrong movie theaters at the wrong time.)

You were honest about your experience with the film, and to me, that's all that matters, and should matter.

I've seen an awful lot of movies that had me on the brink of despair during their first 10-20 minutes and I went on to like very much.

I certainly don't disapprove of your decision to share your thoughts on the movie; in fact, I thank you for the warning. But the one-star rating may not be entirely accurate; you may have found yourself, twenty minutes later, watching a "two-star" movie. Perhaps an "Incomplete" would have been slightly fairer.

Bless you, Mr. Ebert. I had the grave misfortune of screening more than eight minutes of "Tru Loved" when I was part of a film series selection committee. Worse still, I was outvoted by the other committee members, who were swayed by the movie's hamfisted "message" and chose to ignore its manifold aesthetic crimes. Your review is sweet vindication.

P.S.- I lasted long enough to see one of Mr. Vilanch's two roles, that of a cuddly gay dad offering his straight son tea and sympathy after school. I can never unsee it.

Ebert: At last, someone else who has seen it.

The reason I prefer reading your reviews above any others are you honesty and the quality of your writing. It seems to me that your decision on how to review Tru Loved is the product of those very qualities, so I certainly can't complain.

What I mean is, I agree the review reads better this way than it would if you admitted right at the beginning you walked out after eight minutes. And as a reader, what I expect from a film review is that the critic honestly and effectively communicates to us what the experience of watching that movie was like to him. For my part, I feel I read a full review. It may cover only eight minutes of the movie's time, but it certainly gives me a very clear impression of what the movie is like. I don't think I would like it very much, but that's irrelevant since it's unlikely it will open in Portugal, or at least anywhere near where I live.

I agree with the above opinions that some movies get better after the first eight minutes. But some movies start out so far below that no matter how much they rise, 100 minutes won't be enough for them to get anywhere interesting.

Right on, Roger. If a movie sucks, don't waste your time viewing it. I can always tell within one paragraph if I'm going to dislike a book and I stop reading. No reason you can't have the same sense from a film's first few minutes.

I loved your review. Of course the irony is that the only people who have a chance of being misled by it are those who don't read it all the way to the end. Because of this ironic complexity (purposely constructed I wonder?) I found the review sublime and wonderful.

This is interesting: I actually tried to watch Jerry Lewis's "The Bellboy" last night and could only make it through the first 30 minutes. I briefly considered finishing it but decided that all of what I had seen would resemble all of what was yet to come and turned it off. I guess it came down to a weighing of options: is my cinematic determination worth spending another hour of my life in misery? The answer, clearly, was no.

I once believed that an artist that spent so much time and care creating a movie deserved my attention for its entirety; that was sort of the bargain we struck when I sat down. Then I watched the first forty minutes of Cronenberg's "Crash" and felt that since he did not live up to his end of the deal, I was under no obligation to commit to mine. It has saved me countless hours of misery and desperation ever since. For that matter, so have your reviews and I thank you for that.

Your editor said: "I fear your admission will start people wondering whether this is a regular practice." By stating that you only watched a bit over 8 minutes of this film reinforced my understanding that, unless you say otherwise, you watch the whole thing. Your honesty builds the trust; if you had lied about it (and lies of omission are still lies) and gotten caught, then all your other reviews would immediately have come into question.

You've certainly got me stumped, Roger. I think people can go on and on with questions (I know I can) but there's one big question that really bugs me. If the filmmaking of Tru Loved was so incompetent, how did you make it through all the other films that compile "Your Movie Sucks"?!

I think your review is a neat trick, but one that you get away with only because you have been at this a long time. We know you don't do this often, so it was unexpected. A move worthy of Kaiser Soze, or at least Bryan Singer.

However: If this was some young reviewer, I think it would seem hollow, smarmy, too clever by half. In fact, I think I could even predict your one line take on it... what was it... "It is done well, but one is suprised to find it done at all."

You should also know that, much like your infamous "Chaos" or "Brown Bunny" review, you might make this movie much more famous than if you had watched the whole of it and dismissed it, using most of the same text (like you did with "Friends and Lovers," which no one remembers eithier.) That may be your point. Or maybe you were just trying to make us laugh. I did.

Well that was a bold move. It would've been bolder if you haven't told us about it and just blog on about the "walking out" dilemma.

Personnally I have never walked out. I did once but it was only because me and my friend didn't want to sit through Kill Bill while some vibrating mechanism would shake our asses for the following two hours, since it was a multiplex another screening was about to start in another room, one which didn't have vibrating seats.

At home this is an entirely different matter. Long ago I vowed to watch every movie until the end but over the years I've stopped the dvd player more often as the years has gone by.

It is just a question of instincts. I haven't seen nearly as many movies as you but even then I can clearly see where a movie will end up, more so as time has gone by. Endings don't surprise me anymore and I can see most of them a mile away.

So why should I stick to the end if I pretty much know where it's headed? Some details on the way might be different but if the destination is the same as the one I have seen countless times before why should I spend more of my time to it. I am better off to watch something else that will challenge my intellect by it's direction, craftmanship and performances.

here's the review:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081015/REVIEWS/810150277

Anyone who criticizes you for walking out of the movie early cannot simultaneously criticize you for saving your disclaimer for the end, for that would only mislead people who "walked out" of the review before it, too, had finished.

As for the actual act of walking out: as long as you disclose it, I can't see any sort of ethical problem. In general, though, I can certainly see why it might irk some people.

It really depends on how you view the role of a critic to begin with. For myself, I think of them as most other writers, which means they can write whatever they please however they please. For many others, I suspect they're thought of more as public servants. In other words, it's your job to find the hidden gems and endure the terrible films so that the rest of us don't have to.

I don't necessarily subscribe to the latter idea, but I think others probably do.

You're too hard on yourself, Roger. 8 minutes of Roger Ebert time is probably equivalent to at least a half-hour of Rex Reed's, and more like a day of mine.

The problem is with your premise: "A man goes to the movies..." We don't read you because you are average. The world is full of average. In your case, it's "Roger Ebert goes to the movies...and walks out after 8 minutes." That's significant.

You know, it's a great fallacy to posit all opinions being of equal worth. I expect people to work equally hard to value something, but that process has more to do with years of study and experience than how many minutes it takes for each individual task. No one hires a bad lawyer becuase they want to feel him sweat through every moment of their case to get their money's worth. Thanks. I'll pay the smart experienced guy and win now, please.

I am grateful to you for not putting yourself above the average viewer. I don't think of you as average and read you specifically because of that. You are the Roger Ebert that helped fix Brown Bunny, that conducts frame-by-frames of some of the great movies, that sat through all of Three Amigos and then chatted with Chevy about what a horrible picture he'd made. Eight minutes of that time is very valuable.

In the news business, there's a term called "MOS"--the Man on the Street. If that's not slangy enough, the real slang term for that is Triple A--"Ask Any A$$hole". When I want that opinion, I'll interview those leaving the credit sequence of Tru Loved. Until then, I'll stick with you--among others.

Fair enough reasoning, Roger, but I've a question: If you'd recieved "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo" as a screener, how many minutes into it would you have switched it off?

Ebert: Oh, I would have watched all of it. It is bad in a perfectly competent way, with quite acceptable craftsman ship. But then I have watched all of about 8,000 films.

It's the difference between moribund and stinking-dead: The one, you might hang in there on the off chance that it could improve, but the other? Why bother? And why should we expect you as a critic to report back on how the corpse continued to reek?

First of all, I think you did right by mentioning how much of the movie you watched. And also, I think you were right about where in the review to mention it.

On the other hand, I can think of many two, three, or even three-and-a-half star movies where there were stretches of more than eight minutes that were incompetent. Many 'good' movies don't have good endings. There might have been memorable characters, wonderfully composited scenes, impressive set-pieces later on that might make this movie well worth seeing.

It might have been better to not give the movie a rating, and instead of calling what you wrote a 'review', label it 'miscellaneous musings'.

I thought it was very funny. I thought the entire review was like a well-written joke and that the Q & A at the end was the punchline. I laughed.

I have walked out of a few movies in my day. I have also stopped a movie that I found unbearable to get through on DVD.

As was once said to me when I complained of being sore from riding my bike too long: "I give you permission to be human."

Are you anti-gay?

Ebert: No.

Sir, I agree with your choice to have the full disclosure at the end. The article reads better this way. But I wonder whether you and your editor must have paid more attention to her, "Or I could kill the review and we could try to find a substitute."

Your review doesn't answer the question of an average reader who reads reviews: Should I see this movie? It is highly unlikely for this movie to suddenly become very watchable starting from the ninth minute. But you can't say that for sure, and still your opinion will dissuade readers from watching it (despite the full disclosure). Every movie deserves a fairer judgment.

You could have published this "review" a little after the other reviews because your opinion counts.

To one whom I've considered America's preeminemt movie reviewer, and one who has always impressed me as putting the reader/viewer before him/herself, I sympathize with you for the fall-out you're receiving based on the fact that you spent only 8 minutes being tortured by this film. Unfortunately, your editor has every right to refuse to pay you for not watching the film in it's entirety, but you might think it a fair trade for getting back the part of your life that would have been wasted had you stayed until the end. I guess it all comes down to the basic tenants of you "job". Are you responsible for simply informing the reader, or for something more? Is it your job to morally or ethically warn to stay away, or to recommend to see? Ah, there's the rub, because film is supposedly "art", and therefore to be viewed subjectively. As a "man", you are entitled to your opinion, and that's what I want from you as a reader. I have seen enough of the same films and judged your reviews according to my subjective mind, and, if I find that we concur often enough, I take it upon myself to trust your judgement. In this case, I'll be spending about 8 minutes less than you did watching "Tru Loved". Thank you for your honesty.

I could barely stand to look at your review ,having seen this first.Based on your reviews I saw a number of good/great movies and a number of four starrers I regretted.Seeing a film is a high risk proposition in terms of time,not to mention that cinema is a highly invasive procedure----in the worst scenario ,one may become the sum total of video pastings.I think a critic certainly has a mission to quarantine the public from the second rate as well as the putrid.I thank you for your two Chainsaw reviews which kept me off the old one as well as the new.I sometimes miss my childhood days when movies were a once a year unforgettable lingering experience.Nowadays its calorie upon calorie---the law of diminishing returns applies even to the great films.I don't envy your job even if it is only eight minutes.

Roger:

I think we can forgive you for "walking out" of a movie showing (or in this case, turning off the DVD screener). After all, you don't do it very often. The last movie you walked out on, "Caligula," was 29 years ago.

You do realize that this means you can't walk out of another movie until the year 2037.

P.S. I have never walked out of a movie. However, there have been occasional movies (i.e. "Starship Troopers") where the plot was so boring that I fell asleep.

I liked the review, as was pretty astonished to learn that all that happened in 8 minutes. It got me thinking of your reviews where you say it takes a lot of talent to make a movie or performance this bad...like the movie "Death to Smoochy" or Marlon Brando's performance in "Don Juan Demarco". It also got me thinking of "My Dinner With Andre" where they are taking about...party talk, I guess, where Wallace Shawn said at one party it felt like he flew across the world, I'm paraphrasing, and back in one conversation. That's just what I'm thinking of now thinking about the last part of the review. And we should all know by now what you think: "a bad movie is always too long", and now revised, it seems, "a good movie is the right length".

Bravo!

As an individual intensely interested in the critical process of reviewing, I found your review pretty damn hilarious. I am of the same opinion that a film should be a promise. It's promising you that, if you only give it X amount of time, you will be rewarded in kind. And a film should also be able to grab you, at some level, in the beginning for that promise to be seen through.

I have seen films in which I've wanted to walk out of, but couldn't. In fact, the atrocious Queen of the Damned is a perfect example of this kind of film. We'd received pre-screening tickets and the theatre was completely packed with similar individuals, so I was stuck in the middle, with no reasonable way to escape. I learned at this point in time to always sit on the edge of a row, if the movie is dubious.

My point is, if someone were to ask me after this film what I thought, my response would have been, "I wanted to leave 15 minutes into the film." I think the biggest damnation a reviewer can provide his or her readers is, "I stopped watching it." That alone is enough to showcase that a film probably isn't worth your time or money.

You were completely honest in your review, which is refreshing. And as one who loves the structure of writing, I found it funny, upfront and probably one of the best reviews I've read in awhile.

This is a tough one. I enjoyed your review and appreciate your thoughtful explanation, but I think I disagree with your decision for a single reason: your star ratings have a life outside your full reviews. They are scanned by readers, who want to quickly determine whether or not a film is worth seeing, and averaged into Metacritic and Rotten Tomato scores. In these cases, your disclaimer will be absent, and readers will incorrectly assume that your one-star rating applies to the entire film, not just the first eight minutes. Given this context, the one-star rating seems like an unfair judgment. If I were one of the makers of this indie film, I would be devastated.

While I feel sympathy for the poor, doubtlessly sincere folks who took the time to make this film, I don't question your conduct or your very funny account of it, which was completely honest. You mention in the review how much of the film you saw; the rest is a question of style and rhetoric.

There are corollaries here with criticism in the art world. In New York we have the gargantuan art-mall of Chelsea, with dozens of galleries scattered throughout a 10-block radius. When one "gallery hops" in Chelsea, I would guess the average amount of time one spends in a gallery is five to ten minutes. Some shows warrant about ten seconds.

Film is a different medium thanks to time-- you don't see the whole of the work until you've invested an hour and a half of your life, or more. It serves to reason that someone versed in the history of film, and in basic film aesthetics, could make a very, very good bet on the rest of a truly abysmal film from seeing its first 8 minutes.

I find your review distressing. You are an advocate for seeing a movie the way it is to be seen. I would also assume that would include seeing the entire film. There are films that I have watched that started slowly, poorly, only to have me rooting for it, against all odds, in the end.

I also do believe that the fact that this is a gay indie film, has something to do with your not sticking with it. Yes, you may have sought it out...but for some reason, this is a genre that you almost entirely avoid. Yes, you review the Brokeback Mountains, but I've never seen you support a smaller gay indie film. I'm sure there are many reviews of yours I miss--but that is my sense.

I've read your review for North, and I know you sat through that one. In my opinion, you (you personally, Roger Ebert) have put in the hours to prove you're expert enough to make these calls. I don't believe you'd walk out after eight minutes if you honestly thought there was any possible way of salvaging the movie even to North levels. You've earned the right to make that call.

I'm actually happy that you decided to review a movie you walked out on. If you went to go see a film and it failed to make you want to endure its runtime, then that's something that should be shared with your readers. I generally agree with your reviews, so to read that this movie wasn't able to hold on to you for more than eight minutes tells me I'd have a similar experience. Isn't that one of the reasons to have film critics around? To tell me when you couldn't sit through less than 1/10 of a films runtime? To me, that's not being "morally dishonest," it's just plain "honest."

I think the problem is that dreadful star rating you're so fond of. I don't think there would be a problem had you decided not to actually rate the movie and just leave it as a text-only review. That, or change the title of the review to "The first eight minutes of 'Tru Loved'" and then give it one star.

I always look forward to reading your reviews and I always read your reviews before reading your Blog. Truthfully, I don't think that it was necessary for you to explain yourself. If, after watching hundreds of movies over a decades long career, you feel that 8 minutes is enough of a viewing to justify your review who are we to argue.

I personally loved the review and was taken completely by surprise at the end of it. It only took a few seconds to digest the implication of the revelation and then I went right on to the next review. I didn't question your motives, or your right, and I was not bothered in the least.

I look to reviews to do a couple of things and one of them is to keep me from making a large financial mistake. Taking my wife and kids to a movie usually includes dinner and can easily top $100.00 for a short evening. I do not do this lightly, especially in this economy. It is unlikely that I would have chosen this movie to actually spend money on but now I will know that when it hits cable not to even bother to DVR it. Thanks, John

Roger,

You're a professional. You've been doing this for years. You've seen thousands of movies. If that experience allows you to comment on the staging of a Vice Presidential debate, certainly it'd allow you to come to some sort of conclusion about the quality of the movie.

Honestly, that you got that much out of eight minutes says that much about your ability to review a film.

Ultimately, the rest of the film will be left to those who choose to go see it.

The only problem that may arise is that some people who may have otherwise been interested in the movie could read your review, note that a Pulitzer Prize winning critic could only take eight minutes before turning away, and move on.

That Gertrude Stein line does seem extremely patronizing. I wonder - were it a man in the lead (which would take away from the punnery of the title), would they have named him Walt, Oscar, or Alan? Would it be less convenient? Would the boy so casually shrug off the root of his name?

I kind of want to see it now. I stomached Caligula. I'll have to see if I can stomach this.

You were absolutely right. In Chicago, you (used to, anyway) see new condos springing up like weeds. If you noticed that one building was using particle board painted to look like steel, you wouldn't need to see the finished product to know you don't want a unit there. Some frameworks are so radically different from your threshold expectations for approving of something that you know a priori you'll dislike anything that can possibly result. My wife and I went to see "Me, Myself and Irene" one boring evening and knew six minutes in we'd rather do anything else; we switched theaters to "Chicken Run" and learned that our guardian angels have cinematic taste.

"Talking" movies seems more enjoyable and less exhausting than "watching"----eye strain,ear strain ,mind strain wise,time wise.What in your opinion would be the ideal average dose?A review too is a lighter form of entertainment.

Perhaps if you hear from a friend of yours whom you trust that you should give the film a second chance, then you can watch the film again and, if you're up to it, write a new review. Otherwise, I would just let it be.

Ebert: I expect comments from readers who have seen the film.

What makes this a different case than walking out of a studio movie after eight minutes is exactly what you describe: competence. The screenwriter Terry Rossio likes to define a professional screenwriter as one who knows his writing is of professional caliber. (I may be paraphrasing.) If you, the writer, don't know that your writing is to that level, then it almost certainly isn't, and you are consequently not professional for not having realizing that. So to quit a movie because it clearly isn't going to "seal the deal" is, I think, utterly just, especially if there was no particularly eccentric talent or aspect that compelled you to continue.

That said, should the most powerful movie critic in the history of ever inveigh against an amateur production opening on one screen? It could be construed as unseemly, and yet your commitment to reviewing tiny indie movies (when you could more easily avoid doing so) is totally commendable, and I don't see that it ultimately benefits anyone for you to do so with kid gloves.

That said, I wouldn't want to be one of the principals of "Tru Loved" today. Do you think booking the movie in a theater for a paying crowd is an act of hubris? If so, then I suppose this is the resulting nemesis.

I think you should clarify that you are pro gay rights Roger, because while Im pretty sure you meant "Was my review negative because the movie is pro-gay and I am anti-gay?" as a hypothetical critique of that review it could be interpreted as you saying you really are anti-gay.

I found your review not only amusing but illuminating--as you suggested, I did indeed learn from the film's mistakes. That's the only reason I wish you had sat through the whole thing. But then, I suppose I can always do that, taking copious notes on what NOT to do as a filmmaker.

Otherwise, I have no problem with you reviewing the portion of the film you saw. After all, if I had been in your shoes, I would have felt, in the immortal words of every aging movie detective, that I was "too old for this shit". I respect the way you've managed to keep humble over the years, but really, should Roger Ebert have to sit through such trash? The answer to that rhetorical question, of course, is "yes, but only so that he can come away with a funny criticism", and since you accomplished that in 8 minutes, I see no need for you to continue to watch.

The important thing to do is to admit that you did indeed walk out on it, and you did that; I see no difference in honesty between doing so at the beginning or the end. It's like a twist ending, redefining everything that came before it. If you read the whole review (and there's no excuse if you don't), you get the whole idea.

All in all, congratulations on another interesting way to break up the usual format of movie reviews. You've done quite a bit of it, I suppose to keep you and your readers from boredom. It reminds me of the way webcartoonist Ryan North must continually reinvent and redefine the boundaries of his domain in order to maintain interest, because his strip's artwork never changes. It's something you might find interesting. The first one can be found here: http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000001.html

(By the way, you might want to reword the line in your blog which goes: "Was it because the movie is pro-gay and I am anti-gay? Not at all." Which can be read, "I am not at all anti-gay", or, "I am anti-gay, but that was not at all the reason why I didn't like the movie.")

While reading your blog today I was thinking back to your review of “Life of David Gale.” I think the link between these two movies are important messages that are unwittingly undermined by their respective films. To witness the end of “David Gale” is to see a film commit senseless suicide. I haven’t seen “Tru Love” but after your review maybe I could make an abortion analogy.

I don’t mean to be vulgar but I admit I had to do a triple take after reading you left after 8 minutes. If it had been “Once Upon a Time in the West” the opening credits would still be going as you were starting your car.

I guess what I want to get across is that I think you were offended by the films incompetent treatment of a subject that is close to your heart. Feeding some of your numbers into the Math-o-gram, I discover that you liked “Caligula” 15 to 21 times more than “Tru Loved.”

PS reading your website is really one of the joys of life

I have no problem whatsoever with the review... You wrote the truth and we readers can take it from there. As long as there is no deception in the review, and it is well written... everything is kosher.

However, the star rating is an issue. The rating can and will be published everywhere without the written review. You know that. I think you should have pulled the star rating and just left the review.

For what it's worth, conventional moviemaking wisdom gives a typical movie three acts, with the first act taking twenty or thirty minutes. I'd consider that the bare minimum to form an opinion. But some of my favorite movies are ones that somehow subvert in an interesting way the expectations set up by the first act.

I still hold a grudge against the New York Times critic who walked out of Dawn of the Dead in 1978 after only ten minutes. It seemed to me that just sitting through the damn movie was the only part of being a movie critic that I was sure I could do as well as anybody.

I am surprised and little disappointed, Roger. Having read your reviews and articles for almost 2 decades, your perspective has influenced the way I view film and criticism, and by this point I feel as though I can anticipate your reaction to certain movies or ideas. Your latest choice about Tru Loved caught me off guard and seems very UnEbertlike.

I work in higher education admissions which, similar to film criticism, involves a great deal of evaluation on my part as our school tries to select the best incoming class possible. With an acceptance rate of about 30%, we review thousands of applications per year and choose the most accomplished and well-rounded students. About halfway through the application season, it becomes very tempting to skip components of the application, particularly the time-consuming parts like the personal statement and letters of recommendation. After all, a quick glance at an applicant's test scores and grades will give me a pretty good indication of their competitiveness and likelihood for admission. Whenever this temptation surfaces, I give myself a quick pep-talk about giving everyone a fair chance and following through with each applicant because you never know what compelling nugget you may find deep in the application that gives you a whole new perspective on someone's abilities.

The first eight minutes of a film are comparable to an applicant's quantitative figures; it is enough to give you a strong idea of what direction you're headed but not enough to make a final determination. With that small sample, you can predict the rest of the product quality with a high degree of accuracy but every once in a while, something later will pop out and stick with you.

I don't have the option of choosing which applications to read the same way you have some freedom about reviewing movies. Given that you have more of a choice, I don't blame you for recognizing poor quality after eight minutes and not wanting to waste the next 90-plus minutes of your life. But I think by doing so, you are then making a choice to not review the film professionally, even if you privately tell your friends and colleagues that it's a stinker.

However, I commend you for being honest in your review and revealing the fact that your viewing was abbreviated. I am sure there is more than one critic that would have published his/her review and avoided that disclosure! I disagree with your decision, but you approached it with integrity and used it to spark discussion about the role of a critic.

I often ask myself, are movie critics required to finished a movie despite the quality of the film? When a critic admitted on walking out on a movie and then after writing a review about it, with the MO concealed until the very end, is it morally dishonest? Certainly, the answers always depend on our different point of views but regardless, it can always be justified. There is nothing dishonest about it as long as it is justifiable and as you always do, wrote your reviews, and defended them, with admirable intellect and eloquence. Certainly, eight minutes is LONG ENOUGH to get a good and justifiable perception of an entire movie and rarely(or impossible)do a movie able to redeem itself from extremely unbearable, bad beginning.

Ok, so .. after reading your creative review I applauded your honesty and accepted your decision. Would have thought nothing more of the incident. Then I saw your blog entry and thought 'hmm, is Mr. Ebert trying too much to justify his review again' a la "The Longest Yard" or "In My Country" --

But you end up discussing the format of the review and the picture's content. Your reviews have always been idiosyncratic ("Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" is how all film critics/historians should review movies I believe) and brilliantly paced. And how in the world could anyone feel you dislike movies with gay characters? ("Bad Education" and "Brokeback Mountain" were two recent ones you championed and I'm forgetting others).

You have been a critic for forty years and only ever walked out once prior to this incident. That is a phenomenal achievement. Remember when Joel Siegel walked out of "Clerks 2" -- it was because of the inferred plot direction (bestiality) which turned out to be a red herring. In your case it was because of the tools in play - big difference.

As for the question posed by a fellow reader; whether those paying your wage should frown upon your actions, I quote one of your wise phrases: 'the role of the critic is not to reflect public opinion but to inform it.' You did precisely that. Just as you explained that Mike Nichols film "Wit" was too painful to sit through. At least you gave it one star, although by walking out you saved it from the dreaded zero-stars for the 'idiot plot' - we're on our own to discover if this occurs.

I read your review even before I saw that this blog was posted. Learning you only watched eight minutes of the film, I was surprised, slightly disappointed, but not appalled. I would not even think about walking out of a movie, and I've seen some terrible ones, but it's not about any moral obligation. I have a compulsion to remain in my seat, even if I cannot bear it. I want evidence to write my review, yes, but I also want to know every minute of it so that I can be comprehensive in my hatred, and so that I don't overlook any possible shred of competence or entertainment. I need it to feel that I have the authority to write the review.

You don't need it. You have the authority. You have forty years of experience, and a Pulitzer, and from eight minutes of movie you have crafted a comprehensive and hilarious testament to how bad it is. And you end the review honestly and with a deft comic touch: "The rating only applies to the first eight minutes. After that you're on your own." Would the reader be better served if you had screened the whole film? Yes, probably. Would the review be better for it? I don't think so. Is that a paradox? Maybe, yes.

Roger, I think you've been doing this long enough to have earned the damn right to walk out on a bad movie eight minutes in. And thank you for letting us know that you did just that with Tru Loved. It's now up to your readers to determine if they want to sit through this entire film (I don't).

I guess I AM a little surprised that you would take the time to review a movie that you only watched for 8 minutes (even thought it was a good review), but I'm more surprised that you felt the need to stop watching after so short a time... especially when you sat through "Chaos", a movie that obviously sickened and disgusted you.

Perhaps, in retrospect, you wish that you had walked out of "Chaos" after 8 minutes? Was there something about "Chaos" that made you feel you had to watch it all, versus "Tru Loved"?

I appreciate your candor and honesty. As a loyal reader, I do not, in any way, feel slighted that you have reviewed a movie that you watched for only eight minutes. However, I am confused about this particular point:

'Another question may come up. Was my review negative because the movie is pro-gay and I am anti-gay?'

Are you saying that you, yourself, are anti-gay (homophobic?), or whether readers will interpret your personal position as anti-gay following the comments made in your 'Tru Loved' review?

Ebert: I am not anti-gay. I was simply trying to give words to a possible complaint. I would go back and amend that sentence, but with the few shreds of morality I have remaining after reading some of these comments, think I have to let it stand.

Roger,

I'm actually surprised to read that you left. What was it that finally made you feel you ought to leave? You stayed through "Sex Drive" and "Freddy Got Fingered".

What was the last straw that drove you out of the theater?

Brian

Nothing wrong with being a quick learner. There is a difference between a movie starting off boring vs starting out with poor acting and directing.

The only thing wrong with the review is that now I'm curious to see those first 8 minutes to see how bad the movie is. That is just wrong!

I am not particularly fussed one way or the other.

However, I can think of a number of films that start slowly, or in some cases badly, after which the end result of the film as a whole is markedly different to my initial impressions. Examples: Wall-E, Young Guns, Clay Pigeons, Made, and even, in my opinion, Carrie.

That being said, it sounds like this movie got all of the fundamentals wrong in the first 8 minutes - and life is too short as it is.

I must confess, I noticed the blog entry first and then read the beginning of that before then zipping over to the actual review of "Tru Loved" and then finished reading the blog afterward...

Clever little headline for the review: "Not quite 8 1/2" because, well, I thought perhaps the film was a failed attempt at a Fellini homage... No...no, it's not...

I confess I've wanted to walk out on films before, and wanted to quit watching them, but unless something (loud noise from around me, distraction, an emergency, etc.) comes into focus and keeps me from truly watching the film, I will give it my all (how else to account for me catching films like "Norbit" on DVD or "Wolf Creek"? - although your review of the latter should've been heeded).

As a filmmaker and film critic (a hobby so far, and potential fallback position), I think if you truly couldn't imagine it getting better after 8 minutes and 5 seconds of a 100 minute running time, it's your perogative to switch off the DVD player (maybe even put in a better movie?)... Sounds like you gave it all the time in the world!

I will consider renting the film for the sake of learning a valuable lesson of what NOT to do in case I ever make a feature film, and will revisit your review/blog at that time to determine further whether I felt you were right or not. Will let you know how that goes, I'm sure...

I think since you added that your review only applies to the 1st eight minutes makes it both valid and brilliant. And if you watched the rest of the movie, who knows, the score could've even gone lower. I appreciate that you are a critic who doesn't give a movie breaks for sharing a similar politcs as yourself. I always go back to your review of "The Life of David Gale". You realized there that the movie had bad ethics while supporting an ethical cause. Or, in your review of the Passion of the Christ, you spoke to Christianity in a personal, relatable way, describing your own rejection of the Christian message, while acknowleding the powerful emotions that movie illustrated... and you watch so many movies, i'm proud that this is the 2nd movie you've walked out on, and the first after only 8 minutes. that's quite impressive and i trust your sensibilities to know s**t when you see it!

If I wrote movie reviews professionally, I would simply not formally review the movie if I hadn't watched it. While unlikely, there may have been some redeeming value in the film somewhere after the first 8 minutes, so as a professional I feel you have done the film (and yourself) a disservice. You've got your blog now, so perhaps that would be a more appropriate place to share your views of such unwatchable films.

And the gratuitous homophobic smear against Palin was a cheap shot that I'd expect from the left-wing hate sites, not from you, Roger.

First off, I thought your review of the film was hilarious, and I personally identified w/ a lot of your comments because (fortunately or unfortunately) I have experienced a lot of high school theatre - some of it good, most of it bad.

The first eight minutes a movie (or a play for that matter) are crucial. They need to hook the audience in some way (any Literature class attendee will tell you the importance of the "narrative hook"). I do not know if you can fully judge the merits of an entire work on the first eight minutes, but they can certainly give you an indication of what may follow. They are similar to an audition: a director/producer can usually glean the technique of an actor/actress in the first few seconds of a prepared piece (not always but usually).

Your experience w/ "Tru Loved" was similar to my experience w/ the odorous British sci-fi film "Doomsday". I had seen the previews for the movie and was semi-interested; I often enjoy post-apocalyptic films... what can I say? The slated appearances of Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell propelled me into the theatre. Hoskins is reliably phenomenal and McDowell is certainly entertaining. Eight minutes into the film (maybe it was even sooner ... five), I had reached the conclusion that it would be awful. Unbearably awful. The director and editor had apparently thought it would be a good idea to throw their filmed celluloid into a blender. The construction of the film was nauseating in a "I'm-just-learning-how-to-edit-a-movie" kind of way.

The point of that story - and I hope I didn't dredge up old memories of "Doomsday" - is that a viewer can often tell very soon into a film whether or not it has promise. The movie either hooks you or leaves you hanging.

I do not think it's wrong to judge the film on it's first eight minutes, but I respect your choice over the years to see unbearably awful films through to the end (even if it's just to gather evidence against them).

You had me on your side til this...
"Except for some jocks and those who doth protest too much, today's suburban teens are mostly cool with people who are gay, except those residing in the Palin Belt."

I don't want to say you're out of touch, but....well, I can't think of a way to end that sentence.

The movie is about a girl trying to start a GSA in her school. As someone who tried (unsuccessfully) to do so, I can assure you that it's more than just jocks and those who doth protest too much who have problems with it.

One more thing...If I could sit through ALL of American Carol, you can get through at least ten minutes of this.

I would agree with Oliver. If it was so bad you walked out after 8 minutes, well...especially with the sheer examples of bad that you had for it!

That said, I am surprised that I am saying this. When it comes to me (I run a book review site), I just don't review a book if I couldn't get through it, because it might have improved after the point where I hit the Line of Death. For example, there was one book I read that I nearly threw against a wall by page 18, then it improved...then became a wallbanger again by the end. Go figure. But it somehow never quite seemed fair of me to say "This is so bad, I couldn't read it," so I usually will just say nothing. Maybe that's not right, and I know of one popular site that will review books they don't finish and nobody seems to mind (other than the authors, one presumes). At least they indicate that it's so bad it's not worth picking up to look at the back in the store.

I'd add a few points to that list of warning signs, like the hazy glaze that covers all day-time soap operas and B-action films.

Most of the points in the review are valid, since you're reviewing what you saw and explaining why you stopped watching it, but I don't think it's fair to judge an actor's appearance and performance, Bruce Vilanch in this case, if you didn't get to see the actor's work in the film.

Ebert: In all fairness, as a friend who goes back with Bruce to his days as an entertainment critic for Chicago Today, and who attended his first public appearance as a stand-up, I did not comment on his performance, and isn't Bruce's appearance more or less immutable? To be sure, when playing the minister I doubt he wore his "Porn Scene Investigator" t-shirt.

Roger,

I think you had every right to do what you did. I would like to think that your track record allows you a certain flexibility that other reviewers have not yet earned.

And I think I got your point: that all these problems cropped up in the first eight minutes. Any combination of a couple of these issues throughout the film would be bad enough. But to have all these happen before 10% of the movie was done? I'd have turned it off as well.

You told people you switched it off. That's what counts; the placement of that reveal is irrelevant.

I enjoy reading your reviews, I think I may enjoy reading the one star reviews more than the four star. You can sum up a movie in a short but informative piece and I appreciate your skill. It seems as though you didn't like the first eight minutes of this movie and decided to not continue watching. I understand that you did not believe the movie could get better due to it's lack of professionalism, but is it not your job to see it through? Maybe the film has some redeeming scenes towards the end or an additional character gives a superb performance. You are being paid to watch a movie and then review it. Mr. Ebert, please do your job.(I write this entry with a smile on my face.)

In the world of writing, they have a motto: "What's the job of the first sentence? To make you read the second sentence. What's the job of the second sentence? To make you read the third sentence." And so on into, "What's the job of the beginning? To make you read the middle, and what's the job of the middle? To make you read the end."

If you can't watch after eight minutes, it has failed the above test. It is for this reason that action flicks in general and James Bond films in particular begin with action, however tenuously related it might be to the actual plot of the film. The action is there to make you watch the rest. It assumes that you went to an action movie to see action and the opener is the movie's audition for your attention. There may well be more to the movie that takes place between the action and that is delicious gravy soaking into your red meat.

Similarily, if you were willing to go to a film that advertises itself as being about gay teens starting up a Gay-Straight alliance in middle america, you are looking for something and if you don't catch a whiff of it during the audition, you may as well take a hike.

I was probably more impressed by your review's catalog of the number of flaws the movie managed to squeeze into the first eight minutes than I would have been by a review of the (likely) sustained mediocrity of the whole film. A glowing review of an excellent film can focus entirely on one scene or moment- a negative review should be allowed the same narrowness of focus for effect. Besides, I got a good laugh out of it, and so for sheerly selfish reasons, I approve!

I think you should have abstained from writing a review.

It is true that you can tell early on in a movie or book if the creator has the chops to tell a story. However, when you read film criticism you expect the critic to have made a certain commitment to the piece.

This piece read like something a teacher would say to a student, and should have been done in private to the filmmaker if that tone was your actual intent. It does not serve the reader, especially for a film so far off the beaten path that few would be interested in it to begin with.

Short answer: I have no issue with your review. Long answer: I consider your reviews entertainment. I watch few movies; for reviews of movies I intend to see in the theater I defer reading them until after I've seen the movie so that I can better understand your analyis and contrast it with my own opinions. For movies that look interesting but I'm unlikely to see anytime soon, your reviews are an entertaining sort of "Cliff Notes"...I get to watch the movie vicariously through you...and of course, I always enjoy the zero and one-star reviews...those are consistently fun to read. Thanks for the good work!

I just read the review for "Tru Love" as well as "Sex Drive" and for a second, I wondered if you actually wrote either one of those reviews. The review for "W" "The Secret Life of Bees" and "What Just Happened?" all read in your voice, but for some reason the style of the writing for "Sex Drive" and "Tru Love" left me wondering. Yes I know you actually did write them, but I think the reason I had some doubt was because of the harsh tone of the review (Yes, if it's as bad as you say it is then it totally deserves it). I think back to the post about too many stars where you said you love movies and write from the perspective of a lover of movies, even if you don't actually like the movie your reviewing. It seems like "Tru Love" is a movie you truly hated to the point it offended your sensibilities. Which makes me wonder why you didn't just give it half a star? Or watch the rest and maybe you'll have enough ammo to give it zero, and that way you can spit on it's grave.

As far as this blog post goes, it's excellent and it's exactly what this situation calls for and what journalism in this era calls for. Like you said right after you quoted IMDB, FULL DISCLOSURE. You did the right thing admitting how much you watched afterward, but an even better thing by writing this blog. In an era where people don't trust newspapers and journalists in general, more writers should narrative their perspective with a blog. (In fact, I'd even like to see you write a twitter feed about a film as you watch it--in order to get that immediate reaction. If you don't know what Twitter is, read Slate's twitter feed on the debates since their hilarious and show how useful Twitter can be http://twitter.com/Slate)

I can imagine someone telling me to watch "Tru Love", and me responding that Roger Ebert walked out of it in 8 minutes, and them saying "Well he's probably just homophobic", and being able to point to something like this blog that shows the struggle and thinking that goes behind a decision like reviewing a film after only 8 minutes. Transparency is key.

No one has been a more fawning fan of your writing over the years than me (I accept that many may be equally fawning, but none greater), so in the same spirit as telling a loved one their breath is bad: I don't think it's fair at all. Yes, your assumptions about the quality of the rest of the movie may be a pretty safe bet. But the truth of the matter is - you did not watch this movie. 50 pages into a book, you have not read it. 2 songs into a cd, you have not heard it. 8 and a half minutes into a broadway show, you have not seen it.

Think of the inverse: if your four star review of 'W' had an addendum saying "I stopped watching the movie at the 00:08.05 point. For "W" the handwriting was on the wall. The returns were in. The case was closed. You know I'm right. Or tell me I'm wrong."

It's the brevity of the viewing that is unsettling. Yes, that is subjective on my part. I believe there's an assumed set of rules of fair play between critic and reader, and this one doesn't sit well with me at all. And there's also a touch of unesainess because of the source. Just as you bring a higher level of expectation to a Scorsese film, this seems highly non-Roger.

A man reads a review. The reader must be honest enough to admit that he is that man. Sorry about that! Still luv ya, though.

Roger,

The usual blog protocol would be to put a link at the top of your review, probably right at "read it now" in the first sentence. That way, people who happened to see your blog before the review would have an easy way to go straight to the review you're talking about, then come right back here to finish the blog post. Some of us see your blog update before we see that you have new reviews up.

It's not absolutely necessary to make a link—I was able to find the review easily enough—it's just a courtesy.

I think reviewing only the first eight minutes is perfectly legitimate in a full-length review, since you explain your thought process and give full disclosure at the end. But I don't think it's meaningful to compare your partial review to other reviews of the entire movie, and I hope that managers of aggregator sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic will exclude your rating from their totals.

All that said, I do have to wonder why you gave up so quickly. I haven't seen (or even heard of) this film myself -- maybe I'd understand better if I had -- but even given your initial impressions, eight minutes seems like an awfully short time to reach such firm conclusions. You've reviewed plenty of bad, offensive, and/or incompetently made movies before, and I find it hard to believe that this was the worst of the lot.

I had always felt slightly guilty when giving something up in the middle, as if I had failed a duty, until I tried to read dhalgren. I threw it across the room; it burst into its component parts and I gathered the loose leaves and put them in the trash can. Ever since, I've been very comfortable with saying the eight deadly words ("I don't care what happens to these people!") and stopping in the middle.

You did the right thing, and your review is excellent.

As I recall, you also walked out on Lord Shango. But you mentioned that in the review.

As the poster Nick said, life is short and there is no reason to sit through a movie if you really think it's going to be a painful experience. Unless, of course, you are getting paid to do so. In this case you were.

One of the things I like about your reviews is they give me a decent idea of what to expect when (if) I watch the films myself. In this case I just don't know what to make of your *review*. 8 minutes isn't enough; it would be as if I were to read only the first chapter of a fifteen chapter book yet dismiss the entire work. I may very well be correct in doing so, and you may very well be correct in dismissing this film. Nonetheless, neither of our critiques would be of much value for someone interested in the works in question looking for an informed opinion.

Maybe next time if you can't make it through a movie, it would just be better to not give it any review at all? Wasn't there another movie to review you could have substituted for this one? Just a suggestion.

I have to say, I am disappointed you watched only eight minutes and felt that to be enough time to write a review -- and a review lazy enough to pull a direct quote from IMDB, no less.

Also bothersome are your unintentionally homophobic comments. You might point out that paying attention in Gay Lit class is not the problem -- it's the fact of how trite it can sound to use too many symbolic names (although CHILDREN OF MEN gets away with it). And, not having seen the movie, I'm not sure what you're trying to point out by talking about how gay men sound. Your use of the term "homophilic" makes it sound as if you are the opposite: homophobic. Even if you didn't intend that.

And I do not believe that suburban teens in America are nearly as tolerant toward gay lesbian mothers as you would like to think. A 21-year-old myself, I grew up listening to plenty of kids be called "faggots" and "dykes," right here in the state of Illinois.

Ebert: I referred to some gay men. The English teacher in the film speaks in a way that made me conclude he was gay, and if he's supposed to be in the closet, it must be a walk-in. But, yes, you're right about homophobia.

Since you've been put into the position of perhaps appreciating every minute of your life more than most people, I don't begrudge you not watching the rest of the movie, and I know the rule that "if nothing happens in the first reel, nothing's gonna happen", but it seems kind of cruel to the filmmakers and actors to give a negative review to what's probably less than 10% of the film.

This is their profession, most of these people are just starting out, and you're in an enormously influential position. The rest of the movie may produce saving graces that are worth your notice, but you and we will never know that. I understand why you've done what you've done (I think), but if I had worked on the movie, I would've been crushed.

I thought the review was funny and well-written, and that your "reveal" at the end made for a nice punchline. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you're providing full disclosure, I'm okay with it. However, I can understand why those who made the film might be upset with you for doing this. As I'm sure you know, far too many individuals don't actually read reviews, but simply glance at the star rating.

Someone might zip by your front page to see how many stars you gave all the latest movies, see your one-star rating of "Tru Love", and perhaps read the first sentence: "'Tru Loved' as a movie is on about the same level as a not especially good high school play." So, one could argue that you are being unfair to those who are browsing the front page rather than actually reading the reviews. On the other hand, one could also argue that such people deserve to be treated unfairly, due to the fact that they are treating your reviews the same way.

Your decision to turn off this awful movie after 8.5 minutes is fine with me. As many on this page point out, a film might start off shakily and improve but one gets a sense of that possibly quite early on as the film plays. And as ohe or two readers have already comments, life is too short to be spent watching drek.

I didn't understand the part about "Speech Patterns." Did the filmmakers have men who "sounded gay" playing straight men? I l didn't really understand what it was referring to.

Otherwise, as much as "...and that was only the first 8 minutes!" is a good punchline, I am uncomfortable with your decision to run this review. It seems especially cruel to a small, gay-themed movie that would not get much high-profile attention otherwise. I mean, I am confident in your ability as a critic to evaluate a movie in that time span, but it just seems irresponsible for a critic to decide not to review a whole movie. One thing I have always liked about you as a critic, Mr. Ebert, is your willingness to make an effort to engage with a movie. I always felt like you cared. But being in the position of relative power you are as a critic, I am, again, ucomfortable with the implication that you get to decide what movies are "worthy" of your full consideration and which aren't. (Which, obviously, is what you do anyway, but usually you at least watch a whole movie before you dismiss it.)

I do understand why you quoted Warshow there; I get that a critic's review is always going to be filtered through his or her personal taste and viewing experience, and that obviously even if you'd sat through the rest of the movie you weren't going to write something different, but it still bothers me.

It's sort of more in principle than because I think this particular movie is worth my defense though.

Caveat: I have seen 0:00 of this movie.

Mr. Ebert, I agree with your editor. It is unfair to rate a movie one star but only reveal how little you watched at the end -- many people won't look beyond the first sentence or two of the review of a bad movie (I will, of course, in part because you write such entertaining reviews of bad films!).

I'm not criticizing you watching only eight minutes -- given the number of movies you see, I think you deserve some slack to every once in a while stop watching (so long as you reveal that information, as you did, but only at the end). Given your review, I wouldn't have made it as far as the eight-minute mark...

I also have to say, that as bad as this movie sounds, it was not fair for you to give it a one-star rating. You have sat through (watched all of) any number of zero or half-star ratings. Were they "better" than this film on some level?! To review this movie after only eight minutes it would have been much fairer to give it "no rating" (not zero stars, I mean no rating).

I can imagine there might be a film so offensive in the first few minutes as to deserve a zero-star rating, but from your review, this wasn't it. It was atrociously bad, not morally offensive (I'm judging from your review and blog).

If you felt, as a writer, that it was more effective to reveal that you watched only eight minutes at the end of the review, fine -- but then as noted you shouldn't have rated it one star but left it unrated.

Incidentally, I know you've referred to Howard Hawks' rule about three good scenes and no bad scenes a number of times, and a quick search found your 1969 review of "Ice Station Zebra" as an example of a one-star film with three good scenes and many bad ones, but for the sake of argument, if you had watched the remainder of "Tru Loved" and it had three good scenes, would you still have given it one star?

Well, all I have to say is, if the laundry list of bad movie decisions that the movie made were made in the first 8 1/2 minutes, then I agree with your testomony that it was a crappy movie. Surely a movie, making so many mistakes in such a short time could not make up for it in the remaining 90 1/2 minutes, right. Of course you stand by your review, but I stand by your review too.

Miles Blanton

I say bravo and most would agree but comment threads tend to skew towards pedants who hate that sort of thing

You got through two hours of CALIGULA? Wow. I'm impressed. That's about one hour and fifty-five minutes more than it deserved.

I'm not faulting you for giving up after eight minutes. Life's much too short. The older I get, the less patience I have with bad art, especially pretentious bad art.

And why should we cut this movie slack just because it's a politically correct film?

By the way, I'm still dying to hear a review of SPEED RACER from you someday. Or did that only get five minutes of your time?

I agree with the gentleman (Chris S, I think) who posted earlier: having watched 8 minutes of the film is equivalent to listening to the first 2 songs on a CD. As such, I really don't think that your review was fair. Now, to be honest, I enjoyed reading your review, because you have a real wit to the way you trash a bad movie. But, when I read the end and discovered that you'd only watched 8 minutes? I was saddened.

Here's the thing: this review was different than other negative reviews of yours that I've read. It's not like either the reviews of "North" and "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," or your account of seeing "The Brown Bunny" at Cannes. With those films, you'd watched the entire film, and were qualified to say how terrible you thought they were. I'd have been perfectly satisfied if you'd posted your quasi-review here, on your blog, instead of on your main site along with the rest of the week's new film reviews. In the future, would you consider an approach like that?

All the best,
-Adam

If a movie's first eight minutes are so bad that you actually feel like walking out on it, it's a bad movie no matter what happens in the rest of the movie. A good movie might have a pathetic opening, but there should be still be a hook.

You always remind us that a movie isn't about what it's about, it's about how it is about it. It took me three years after first reading that line to understand it. If you knew in the first eight minutes that this movie wasn't going to be able to tell its story with any competence, there wasn't any reason to stick around for the rest of it.

A person only needs a couple of bites out of a plateful of food to determine whether a meal is great or terrible, so I suppose the same could apply to movies. It just doesn't make for the best reviews.

Funny thing is, I believe most of us commenters have given similar reviews before. I have, several times, seen no more than a couple of minutes of movies on cable (The Son of the Mask comes to mind) and blasted said movies to my friends when I talked to them. To chastise one of the foremost movie critics from engaging in this activity seems kind of silly to me.

My opinion probably doesn't count for much, and understand that I have long been a big fan of yours. I'm not trying to sound rude. And yet I think that anyone being paid to watch and review a movie owes it to his or her audience to sit through the whole thing. Barring that, it is at the very least your duty to leave the movie with no star rating, and to disclose from the start that you only sat through the first eight or so minutes of the movie.

You say that to do this would have perverted the flow of the review. Why is that, exactly? Could it be that if a reader saw from the start that you only sat through a very tiny fraction of a movie that your credibility in judging the movie would be severely tarnished? That nobody would read your review if it were revealed up front that the product you were offering (a review of a movie's first eight minutes) were different than that which was advertised? (a review of an entire film)

What would we say about a sportswriter who sat through only the first inning of a lopsided baseball game, and then chose to write about it as though he were recapping the entire game?

One of the great pleasures of adulthood is walking out of a movie before it's over. I'm not a child. I don't have to finish my vegetables.

What I don't understand is how you've managed to hold on for so long, and that you've just lost your bearings now. Don't tell me what was so bad about this film, I can figure that out. What kept you glued through the others? And what was the tipping point?

Personally, I can't fault you. It's one thing to watch a bad movie that's at least sort of well-made; that can be kind of enjoyable, given the right circumstances, mindset and the right movie. But a badly made movie is going to be excruciating. After all, if you can't make the movie's image visually pleasing in any way or facet, what hope is there for the rest of the film?

I'll add that I've sat through plenty of very, very short, very badly made movies. I attended a video production class for two years, and in the second year, I watched so many videos that were terrible in all sorts of ways that I became known as the resident critic. (My most frequent criticism: "Just acting funny is not funny on its own.") It's one thing to watch a badly made video in class, made by students who were just starting to learn how to use the equipment. It's another thing to go and pay to see a student-made film in a theater. Judging from the review, this movie could have been made by people who just got their hands on a camera. It's nice that they'd like to be filmmakers, but until they have a product, they should keep practicing.

As long as you're honest, I don't see the big deal. I've listened to or read your reviews for a long, long time and have come to trust you. Even when I disagree with you, I usually know where you're coming from.

If you walked out I want to know about it, because you've sat through some monsters and survived the entire running length. I've only walked out of a few movies myself, though I imagine my percentage is much higher just by way of volume, and there's a specific feeling I get when a movie is rubbing me the wrong way. I hold on for as long as I can, but I remember that above all, I have limits and it's pointless to test them more than is warranted.

As for the specific points, I can only take your word for them. Given my long list of films to see, I'm not likely to see it anyway. *shrugs*

Whatever, by the way, has many many uses. I could probably tell you what I thought the specific whatever meant if I saw it. It may not mean what you thought, but your criticism didn't hinge upon just one problem, anyway.

"In all fairness, as a friend who goes back with Bruce to his days as an entertainment critic for Chicago Today, and who attended his first public appearance as a stand-up, I did not comment on his performance, and isn't Bruce's appearance more or less immutable? To be sure, when playing the minister I doubt he wore his "Porn Scene Investigator" t-shirt."

This might be nitpicky, but isn't that last sentence still pre-judging Vilanch's performance? Or are you basing your opinion of his performance on his usual appearance? In all probability, yes, Bruce Vilanch gave the performance one could expect of him, but I still don't think it's right of a professional critic to judge his appearance as a minister without having seen it. Even if he's a friend.

Ebert: I was responding to a charge that I reviewed his performance and appearance without seeing them. I said nothing about his performance. As for his appearance, that is the whole crux of the Look! Isn't that Donald Trump? syndrome. Let's face it. The only way Bruce Vilanch could conceal his appearance would be under a Ku Klux Klan robe. I'll bet you a shiny new dime you know you;re watching Bruce Vilanch both times.

I am of the mind that reading reviews is entertainment, but it is also similar to having a friend you can honestly talk with about how you felt about a film. Whether you agree or argue, part of the joy is in having a dialogue about the entire movie. Granted, the movie might be bad or lacking, and you might be able to judge that in the first eight minutes of the film. I don't think you can judge the script of the film in eight minutes. Even if the actors are just regurgitating lines, some of those lines might be good. They might be great! Or the film might get worse and worse, and make you wish you were watching that last hour of "Caligula" you missed...

I have not seen "Tru Loved." It is unlikely I would have seen it with or without your review. However, I did enjoy reading the review, and I am very happy to find your site and your blog!

I also found your review to be amusing, but I must admit to feeling bad for the filmmakers. I've been in several local plays and *very* independent films, at least one of which received a less than charitable review. And I remember wondering what the point was for a reviewer to write a fairly scathing review of such a small, low-budget production. It seemed like a disproportionate response, and just unfair - couldn't they have kept their opinions to themselves? But I'm sure it's a fine line to walk - as a reviewer, you have an obligation to steer people away from films that aren't worth their time. So I can see both sides.

In a sense you didn't review the movie. You talked about how badly the movie was executed. The movie's poor production prevented you from experiencing the story. That is the real story. You could have said up front that you only made it through eight minutes but that wouldn't have changed the substance of the review. I certainly got your message. Fortunately it takes less time to read a review.

As an economist, I fully support anyone willing to walk out of a movie that stinks. After you've paid for a ticket and endured twenty minutes of an excrutiatingly bad movie, you are faced with two choices:

1) Stay and hope that the movie will become good, which is unlikely.
2) Leave and do something that will be more fulfilling.

Many people choose to stick around and watch the movie because they paid for the ticket and have already sat through some of the film, but that decision is a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy. No matter which decision you make, your money and time will have been foregone, so a rational decision-maker should ignore those sunk costs (and walk out of the crappy movie).

I did not hesitate to walk out of "You, Me & Dupree," and I am much happier for having done so.

Honestly, I can relate to you. There have been times, mostly this year with "88 Minutes" and "The Love Guru", where I just couldn't force myself to sit through it. I didn't leave, but I was urged to get out of my seat and leave because I love movies and I don't want to waste my life sitting through a peice of crap when I could be watching a great film. I also appreciate your honesty. I started watching Ebert and Roeper (I miss the show) when i was ten (I'm 14 now) and you and Mr. Roeper inspired me to want to become a critic, and it would be heartbreaking to me if I found out my favorite critic fabricated a review.
I have to say though off topic, I think "Miracle at St. Anna" is a five star movie. I respect your opininon, but I think its the best movie this year. I wrote a four page review on it and if you ever want to read it, its at ronspopcornreviews.com, and it'll be on the site in a couple of days (I write all of my reviews on paper first).

Thanks for being honest

Dear Roger,

I must confess that, since I've started to read your blog, I have found so many true and inspiring points in your texts, all of which have been helpful and illuminating in one way or another. I am a film critic also, and even though my see may be a smaller one, my boat does navigate it with the same ferocity as such a noble calling deserves. That is why I must say that your review in which you have confessed walking out of a movie theatre after only seeing eight minutes of film is not only refreshing, but it also reinstates our almost forgotten right to actually do so if a situation does indeed call for it. I myself have walked out of several films, one being Luc Besson's Janne D'arc. I don't recall all of the details, but I know that it happened after the second half of the movie, when Dustin Hoffman's confusing God figure made his debut, and Mila Jovovich started giving out sounds that a full grown cat couldn't properly manage, accompanied by frequent frenzy and hallucination scenes worthy of at least one Razzie. But that is beside the point here. The point is, that people usually forget that giving two or one star to a bed film is not the ultimate thumb down. You wrote "In some way, a film must seal the deal with us. It must make us willing to watch to the end". If the film fails at that, then there is no point in torturing yourself. So, the ultimate thumb down IS actually our democratic right to walk away. Just walk away. That's the most serious critique I know of. Needless to say - it should be administered cautiously and with care. But when we do choose to use it, it should be done publicly and with one's head held high. So, that's why I would not agree with your editor to just kill the review. This would not be right, and it would stand against all the principles dear to me. This is my honest opinion, and having said that, also my candid support of your action. Not that you would ever seriously need it, for anyone who has ever watched movies had surely found him/herself in a situation like this. Having the courage to do it is another matter. You did have it, and that IS enough for me.

Two things come to mind.

1) Either yourself or Gene Siskel - I forget - once said that if nothing happens by the end of the first reel, then nothing will happen during the movie. Having seen my fair share of incompetent flicks at film festivals (alliteration accidental), I know that it is possible to know that some movies can be pretty much written off after eight minutes. Sometimes before you even get to the opening credits.

2) Your review was honest, which is all one can hope for. I admit to being surprised that you'd only seen the first eight minutes, but it made me chuckle and, musing upon it further, I decided that it was perfectly valid and that the little twist at the end made your review, in all probability, more enjoyable than the movie in question. It is infinitely better than the approach which I know some critics take at film festivals: i.e. to watch the first 8 minutes, read the plot synopsis, and review it under the pretense that they have seen the entire movie.

My MO, when going to the movies, is to see things I've never seen, before, and numerous bad films have that to offer (Jorge Ameer and Uwe Boll may be the most incompetent auteurs working today, but being and audience member at one of either of THEIR films is far from a passive experience).

I think, if anything, it's the films I more or less have already seen in another incarnation that I feel have wasted my time, and are worth walking out on (especially when the newer incarnation has only mediocre aspirations).

Example. Why see 'Annapolis' when one has seen 'An Officer and a Gentleman'? Or 'Swimfan' when one has already seen 'Fatal Attraction'?

I greatly regret having seen 'Swimfan', a film that, in two hours, didn't offer me a single original image or experience. 'Annapolis' I know from its trailer and from reviews, and I'm not ashamed in saying that I will never see it.

P.S. I'm surprised that no one's pointed out that the 'Hey! There's Donald Trump!' Syndrome alludes to the film 'Ghosts Can't Do It' (1990), a film that at least offers the unique sight of Anthony Quinn as one of the most ridiculous-looking ghosts in movie history (a pity it's still only available on VHS).

I have walked out of two movies in my life, both right before the "climax," and both for similar reasons. The first was Star Wars Episode I. The acting was so leaden, the plot so dry (a tax rebellion?), and I was so invested in the nostalgia of the original three from childhood, that I simply couldn't stomach sitting around to see what everyone knew was coming anyway(a big Death-Star like explosion).

The other movie was Fight Club. I was annoyed by what I percieved as hyperacting mixed with a plot that seemed on par with one of Van Damm's lesser works. Here too I thought the climax was apparant. Ed Norton would kick Brad Pitt's booty Karate Kid style.

Of course I now feel like a tool for jetting on Fight Club. I'm not an uber-fan, but it certainly holds up well and the ending wraps everything together.

On the other hand I take some pride in not passively accepting what I to this day find to have been an awful AWFUL movie.

The difference is, I could "make up" with Fight Club by paying for a rental, buying the movie, giving it good word of mouth.

Star Wars Episode One can NEVER make up to me for taking away my money, my time, and more importantly part of the joy of the original movies. I really wish I'd walked out on that one 8 minutes in.

I must admit that I was surprised more by the fact that it got even one star than the "Eight Minute Admission." While I don't expect that you walk out of very many movies that don't grab you right away, I also recognize that, as a human being, there are just some things that cannot (and should not) be suffered through. A bad high-school play is tough enough for parents and friends to sit through, and those experiences are often ameliorated by amusing anecdotes and fond memories. Watching a feature-length production with those same errors, but none of the fringe benefits sounds like torture to me. I'm impressed that you lasted a whole eight minutes, really.

I do sympathize with the makers of "Tru Loved," however, since I do know how difficult it is to make a film that gets any kind of theatrical release. I hope that they can use the experience as an education, and endeavor to grow artistically, rather than take the 'I tried and I failed, so I'm gonna be a(n) (insert "more steady job) instead" path.

And Bruce Vilanch as a character called "Minister?" Don't tell Sarah Palin...

Only 0.99975 percent??? Man... that's a lot of walk outs!!!

I kid. I kid.

I enjoyed the review, Mr. Ebert - it was well-written and honest.

I do wonder this, though: if it is appropriate to review the first 8 minutes of a picture that you have only seen 8 minutes of, is it appropriate to review the first 8 minutes of a picture you have seen in its entirety? Why or why not?

When you walk out of the movie, Roger, I know not to see it. It's a powerful statement. I mean, really, any movie so bad that you have to leave should get negative stars.

I spend way too much time reading your negative reviews past and present for amusement, so I can say from memory that you've also walked out on 'The Statue,' 'A Stranger in Town,' 'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull,' 'The Devil's Widow' (maybe) and 'Lord Shango,' along with the already-mentioned 'Caligula.' (Way too much time.) All of these reviews made it pretty clear why you left, and none of them made it seem like an unfair decision; that's because they're autobiography, of course, and you're going to look 100% fair no matter what...but unless you outright lied about the movies themselves I'm pretty sure your reasons for walking out would hold up in a court of law. I wouldn't say that tradition has been broken with 'Tru Loved.' Since you were able to pinpoint exactly when you stopped, I am now wondering what movie holds the record.

I should stop here, but...well...if ever there were a blog post with an opportunity for me to jam in this question, I guess this is it. Did you actually see all of 'Halloween III?' It's clear you stuck around to the end, but the plot summary in your review, uh, sort of suggests you didn't make it in time for the first twenty minutes or so. (Believe me, if you have to miss the first twenty minutes of anything, miss them from 'Halloween III,' but it always seemed sort of mean to do that and then criticize the plot for being fuzzy.)

I thought the review was one of your best this year.

Anybody reading homophobia into the review is obviously chasing windmills. I'll blame it on this being an election year: Obviously innocent statements (Lipstick on a pig) are going to be deliberately misrepresented.

We don't live in the land of Michael Powell anymore and it shows. Film seems to have faded into mediocrity. Film critics, as well. Why should we expect critics to waste their precious time watching the entire movie? Also,does Stanley Kaufman still review movies?

Ebert: Stanley certainly does, and is as awesome as ever. One of the most concise prose stylists I know. Check out the New Republic. It's a crime more of his reviews aren't linked on RT/Mega/MRQE.

I was another reader who read your review prior this blog update. I was surprised that you had walked out of a film, because I'm a long-time reader and know you make a point of almost never doing that. However, I thought the organization of the article allowed for the justification of leaving the film to come prior to the admission. If everything you say is true, the film is predictable, manipulative, inept slop. The remaining hour or so would have been the same, just more of it.
I don't think a critic ought to feel ashamed of leaving a film early anyway. In your capacity as critic, it is your job to make your full attitude towards the film clear. While the medium of the critic is usually words, extra-textual critical gestures are justifiably within your toolbox. If you leave the film, that says something. It should be used rarely, but it's legitimate.
That said, the issue of competence reminded me that I read somewhere that you are a fan of Doris Wishman.

I was shocked and appalled by the placement of your revelation, though I was not offended by your having watched only 8 minutes of the movie or your publishing the review despite this.

Of their many wonderful qualities, one I admire most in your reviews is the order in which you reveal your thoughts. I always know from the content and tone of the first paragraph what you thought of the movie and, more importantly, I have an idea of what I would think of the movie. It frustrates me how you can read two-thirds of the way through reviews by some other reviewers without knowing whether they liked the movie or not.

I think the admission of only being about to watch the first 8 minutes, of this being the first movie you can remember since 1979 you couldn't sit through, would be a far better hook to get the reader to read the review than the current opening, and reveal more to the readers as well. As far as saving it for the climax of the review, I think that is a cheap, and unnecessary, use of the revelation.

Is there not irony in judging a movie solely on its very beginning and writing a review in which you leave the most important revelation until the very end?

The first, last, and only thing that I'm interested/worried about in this instance would be the manner of your exit. You have every right to leave a film, and I am glad that you were able to admit that you left in the review rather than pretend it didn't happen. However, if you got up and made a scene like (idiot) did for Joe Seigel did for 'Clerks II', then I would have to view the situation more darkly. That is indefensible in any terms, bitter or sweet. I'm hopeful that this was not the case, Roger, as I have not felt conditioned to expect such actions on your part (from all the wonderful things I hear about you). Regardless, although I may never see it, 'Tru Loved' is on my 'Wow Ebert walked out of it' list, and being you have finished more than one Pauly Shore film, that is a devastating categorization.

I agree with the commenter who wrote, "If I were the filmmaker reading this review, I would be devastated." If you had walked out 2/3 of the way through it would be one thing, but you chose to stop watching after only 8 minutes. At that point you should have forfeited your review to someone willing to watch the film all the way through, perhaps saving your comments about the film for your blog.

While as a viewer you have earned the right to walk out of any movie you like, as a professional critic your have an ethical responsibility to give every single film you're publishing a review about your complete attention. If you must walk out so soon, you shouldn't be publishing a review. It's completely unethical. Cover it on your personal corner of the internet, but not the newspaper. That crosses the line.

If I were the filmmaker I would not only be devastated, I'd be angry. And I'd be calling your newspaper right now demanding a retraction and a personal apology for publishing that review. It's a complete breach of journalistic ethics, and while you're quite the critic, you haven't earned the right of summary judgment of films you haven't seen. Why even watch 8 minutes? Why not review movies based on their trailers or press kits? It shows a lack of respect for both the filmmaker whose film you are about to destroy in the press, and for the art of film criticism in general.

You're free to choose not to watch the film after 8 minutes - but upon doing so you were in no position to write a review that would be published in your paper. This isn't a hobby where you can do whatever you want, this is your JOB - you have a professional obligation to actually see the movie if you're going to throw stars around and publish a review.

I'm really disappointed in both you and your editors. This never should have gone to print.

Roger, I have a question that is completely unrelated to this post. I need help. Tonight offers me two terrific television viewing options being showed opposite each other: Game 5 of the ALCS and "The Thief of Bagdad". On the one hand, I have the Rays, vanquishing the mighty Red Sox and sending the world's most insufferable fans home for the winter, cold and hungry. On the other, I have a classic of cinema, a film I've never seen but about which I have read many good things. What should I do, Roger? What should I do? I await your word.

I should tell you, the Rays currently have a two run lead, if that information is useful in your decision.

Ebert: If you are a real fan, the movie can wait, although it will undoubtedly be a better use of time.

A few things, as someone who has seen the movie:

7. Cameo appearances. Their use must be carefully controlled to avoid breaking a film's mood with the Hey! There's Donald Trump! Syndrome. That is doubly true when the cameo star is famous and appears in a double role, as does Bruce Vilanch, from "Hollywood Squares." Here he plays "Daniel" and "The Minister." Senator, I know Bruce Vilanch, and he's no Minister.

If memory serves, he actually plays Daniel, who is the gay uncle of a straight kid and who is also an ordained minister (albeit a sketchy mail-order one); not sure why you thought otherwise, although I'm sure you would have known if you'd watched the whole movie.

5. Daydreams. Can be annoying, especially when absurdly stagy. Even more especially when the daydreams are in soft focus and then we cut frequently to the heroine in sharp focus, looking at scenes in her own daydreams and nodding and smiling.

I hated that opening too, without question, and in the middle there's a really bad couple of minutes that isn't worth describing. About 20 minutes in, though, I really enjoyed it, more than I was expecting to.

Ebert: Why does she daydream in lesbian fantasies, if she's straight? Or am I hopelessly naive?

I understand your style of trying to create a climax for your ending, and you achieved it really well. But it seems a bit dishonest to the readers and the people who made the film. Though im sure you have excellent perception for knowing if a movie is likely to be bad or good before its finished, your still only reviewing the first 8 minutes of the film. And Im sure a movie has surprised you in the past. I recently saw "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" and after watching the first 15 minutes I wanted to shoot myself. But thanks to a review (I think done by Roeper) I knew the movie would pick up and be quite pleasant. And it was a good movie and worth watching.

roger,

i look at choices this way: there are two mistakes we can make.

1. to do something you didn't have to do, and
B. to not do something that you should have done.

while it can be argued that both 1 and B are the same, i plan not to care.

in the case of the walking critic, what harm could have come from watching the rest of the film? there are only two answers of which i'm aware.

A. that viewing the film would have harmed you, or
2. that your time is more valuable.

is it A, 2, or something else?

One thing I'd like to add:

I remember reading your Movie Answer Man book when it came out and reading the bit about the elementary school class that sent in a bunch of questions. One kid said that it must be fun to get to watch movies all day. You said (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "It's not always fun. I have to watch the bad ones too." Is that still true?

I think it was Woody Allen who pointed out that he never wants to miss a movie's first ten minutes because the filmmaker's most inspired work is often in the first ten minutes. If the first eight minutes of "Tru Loved" are as bad as described in the review, then I find it hard to believe that it gets any better at the twenty, thirty, or 100 minute marks. Life is too short for bad food, bad wine, or bad cinema.

FWIW, I worked on this movie. I won't go into the "was it right/wrong" issue to review a movie after eight minutes.

I would VERY MUCH, however, like to point out that Bruce Vilanch plays only ONE character in the movie - that of Uncle Daniel, the gay uncle of a straight boy. His character is asked to preside over a commitment ceremony between the two gay mothers in question.
He does NOT play a separate character.

Of course, if you'd watched more than eight minutes of the movie, you would have figured out that IMDB, every once in a while, gets something wrong.

Thank you.

Ebert: Thank you. So IMDb was misleading. Ouch. My next blog will be about the lessons I learned from this one. Tell me one thing: Was I safe in betting a shiny new dime that Bruce was recognizable>

I'm glad that you were honest about leaving eight minutes into the movie. It would have been terrible if you hadn't mentioned it and then word got out somehow, so I agree with you on that.

I'm actually surprised that you've only walked out of one other film, especially considering how much work you have. Every week some movie(s) comes out that I think to myself, "Man. That's going to suck", so I won't bother seeing it. As a critic, you aren't afforded that luxury.

Thanks for the honesty.

Think of it this way, Roger: people read your reviews for pleasure, and/or guidance. The review of 'Tru Loved' certainly meets the first criterion. As for the second, if your readers haven't the attention span to read a pleasurable review in its entirety, what are the odds they'll be able to sit through more than eight dull minutes of a movie?

It was a upstanding review. The complete lack of movie-making competence was the one and only quality that made it almost completely certain that the remaining 91 minutes would be just as bad as the first 8. Your editor was doing her job to have a cow, but, really, Roger, your audience knows you well enough by now.

My inner mathematician can't resist constructing the bizarre counterexample to the conjecture that the whole 99 minutes had to be bad. Wouldn't you have been extremely embarrassed if, after publishing the review, you had found out that, at 00:08:06, the camera pulled back, a la "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", to reveal it was a movie within a movie about a fascinatingly disturbed character who couldn't make a good movie to save her life? Say, Millie Lammoreaux revisited. Upon a second viewing, the 8:06 would be seen to be a brilliant reflection of the individual aspects of director Millie's psychoses.

I guess it's okay that you walked out of it and it's good that you were honest about it. But to review it doesn't exactly seem fair. Maybe doing something else, like just saying don't see it, or not reviewing it all would've been good. I usually don't see a movie that you don't review.

Roger,
For me this is a case of understanding another person's reasoning but disagreeing with it because of precondition. Of course as a moviegoer you have every right to walk out on a movie, but as a professional film critic I wonder if you could have made the same points in your review while still giving the film something more of a chance. You said you recollect walking out of "Caligula", but in your review of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" in 1973 (a terrible film, to be sure), you wrote that you walked out after forty-five minutes. My opinion: first ask yourself if this movie was worse than Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

On the other hand, it's an effective review. And, I haven't seen Tru Loved yet.

Roger, could a review on eight minutes worth of movie draw major attention to a film that, in your opinion, does not warrant any more viewing than that span of time? I, too, have seen "Caligula", which I am unhappy to say, I sat all the way through. With that film, I would have rather stared at a bucket of fresh vomit. I remember sitting through Carrot Top's "Chairman of the Board", a film labeled a comedy yet filled with ripe excrement from reel to reel. As a former film reviewer and a eternal movie lover, I have sat - begrudgingly at times - through films that made me scratch my head in astonishment on how they were made. Sometimes, and please confirm this to be true if you will, does our pleads for movie goers to not waste time or money have an opposite effect? Will the public in fact see that movie because "nothing could ever be that bad"? I cannot remember ever walking out or turning off a movie no matter how bad it got, but I feel that if I don't convincingly convey how bad a movie really is, then I have served an injustice to the people that read me. No doubt they may get in their cars, drive to the theater and waste their time and money on such forms of "art" or "entertainment". I feel your pain, Roger, but I also feel we help these movies along even though that is far from our intent. Don't you agree?

Although I've yet to see the movie, this article and the review itself were fascinating reads for someone who aspires to make films and craves the thoughts of others on what constitutes "goodness." I'm kind of interested in catching this one now because of this (I used to have a prof. who encouraged us to find bad sincere movies to understand why their bad and appreciate why their band- "Tru Loved" looks like a solid candidate for this).

Even though I know you'd rather not subject yourself to the other 92 minutes of the movie, I'd love to read a further breakdown of it. Perhaps it's the next addition to the shot-by-shot analysis, albeit in a much more ironic application.

I've been reading your reviews all these years for your honesty, and as far as I can tell from the comments so far, that seems to be one of the fundamental reasons you have a devoted band of readers.

One of the previous comments by J. Ryan Greenwood said that an "incomplete" would probably have been fairer. That got me thinking; would a 'no star' rating be fairer than a 'one star' rating for this movie? I wouldn't know how that would work. This might make me sound stupid, but I never could fully understand the validity of a 'star' rating.

"The rating only applies to the first eight minutes. After that you're on your own."
Sounds like an easy way out. It probebly would have been best not to review it at all.
It does makes me wonder how many 4 star movies you only sat 8 min through. If none I apologise.

Ebert: None. Apology accepted.

Because you had composed such a large list of things going terribly wrong on-screen, I was sure that you had soldiered on through the film to come up with a list of the major points for others to take away from this mistake. But when I found out that you'd come up with a list of major complaints, one for each minute you'd sat there? I've got to be honest - I laughed.

I had not heard of Tru Loved until I read your review this evening. It is one of your very best reviews along with 1970's Claire's Knee and 1971's The Return of Count Yorga.

Even though people will criticize you for writing a review of the first eight minutes of Tru Loved, it will become one of your most famous, well remembered, and talked about reviews.

I did do some research on the IMDB and found that Tru Loved had won awards at film festivals. These festivals were Santa Cruz, Breckenridge, and the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. I am sure you found this information too. There are two possibilities for why Tru Loved won these awards. Either the film is a lot better than a one star movie and has some strengths, or it won these awards because of political correctness. What do you think is the reason for these wins?

Also, if this is the first film that you walked out on since Caligula, does this mean it is the worst film in 29 years? If so, it has to be awfully bad. I say this because you have sat through so much junk in the past 30 years, but never walked out on any of it.

Ebert: Somewhere above is a comment from a person on the selection committee for one of those festivals, who says the film was selected over his or her strong objections.

I used to read screenplays for a production company in Los Angeles. I had to read them in their entirety before I wrote my coverage. But it's widely known that if the writer does not have you in the first ten pages (which would be ten minutes of screen time) that they've blown it. Most people aren't going to invest more than that ten minutes in something that clearly doesn't have what it takes. Granted the movie or script could be wonderful a half hour in but the task at hand is to hook them early and keep them. If you went to a restaurant that served you an appetizer that was vile, it's not very likely you'd stick around in hopes of a more impressive main course. Nothing wrong with sparing yourself almost certain misery and telling it like it is in a review.

Unfair.

You were able to discern quickly that this wasn't much of a movie.

But you tricked me into reading your whole essay before letting us realize it wasn't much of a review.

You are right about gay guys trying to sound gay. I was friends with a gay guy at a job I had and he would talk pretty normal to me, but then when this one straight guy would play around flirt with him, he had no problem with running around with arms flailing screaming like a little girl pretty much everyday. I could tell immediately he was gay by that voice, but I guess I am a pretty detached person so when we first met he had to say "Keith? Hmm, that's a nice name", to which I just said "you know, not a lot of people like it."

Nothing is more miserable to a movie fan like myself than bad acting that doesn't go away after the first few minutes. It makes it impossible to endure the story since there is no one to identify with. I completely agree with your decision.
Actually 9 years ago I dutifully took my daughter and her friends to the Pokemon Movie. After two minutes I was praying I would be able to sleep through it, but after 10 minutes something miraculous happened - the fire alarm in the cinema went off. Saved by the bell! If I ever decided to become a movie critic, I'd incorporate a fire bell in my rating system for bad movies.

I saw the trailer on YouTube and I was so utterly bored, wanting to cut out at 30 seconds of the 1 minute 11 second ad. Jane Lynch has the only bright spot with the line "If you were doused with kerosine and lit on fire you couldn't be any more flaming". That's only funny because it comes from Jane Lynch.

I don't approve of your choice but I appreciate your honesty. I wonder how I would have approached your review if you revealed the information in the beginning.

I am trying to follow your eight points and really put together, mentally, how you drew those conclusions in such a tiny amount of time. This is a dopey teen indie, I don't understand how it could be so unremitting that you felt the need to bolt from the theater. I guess I could understand if it were something completely stomach turning like "Hostel" or "I Spit On Your Grave" or "Wolf Creek" but this seems to be more forgettable then horrible.

i'm sorry - Mr. Ebert, when you write Ebert: "I estimate I have sat through 0.99975 percent of all the movies I have seen" do you mean 99.975%, not less than 1% of all the movies that you've seen? or am I not getting something here about how movie critics work?

Ebert: You are of course correct. 99.975%.

Roger,

Life is short, and if a movie is not only bad, but proving to be a waste of time on a more basic level, you needn't feel bad in the slightest about this. As a young, hopeful film critic who has already gone through one horrifying near-death experience -- to say nothing of battling diseases and extended hospital stays -- it's my belief that the more one can avoid unpleasant and/or pointless experiences, the better. Why bother? I've no patience for wated time, and fondly recall in such moments a certain quote from Al Pacino in Heat ("Don't waste my mother******** time!"). Movies shouldn't just entertain us, they should teach us something, and there have been too many cases where I've thought to myself five, ten, fifteen minutes in, "This is a waste of my time," and then I finish them, and the remaining 90+ minutes only served to confirm that suspicion.

Now, if I'm required to review something, I'll do my best to tough it out (Let's Go to Prison, I Know Who Killed Me, Epic Movie, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie, oh, the horror!), and chalk it up to being able to appreciate the good movies even more. But I'm happy to say I didn't bother with the majority of films like Mad Money, National Treasure 2, Dan in Real Life, or The Love Guru, among others. I only wish I'd carried that same logic through on Vantage Point.

I commend your review, and hope that the makers of the film take your criticisms as being as constructive as I believe you intended them to be.

The important concept in the review is "incompetent." If you're going to charge people to see your movie, it should at the very least *be* a movie. Roger made it quite clear these are the types of amateurs who give amateurs a bad name.

If I understood the set up correctly, you didn't walk out of the film after 8 minutes, but turned off the dvd player at that time.

Do you think that's a meaningful distinction?
Would you have gotten up to leave? Or suffered a few minutes more.

FWIW - I have seen the movie. The whole thing. With an intelligent audience who seemed to like it fine. Bruce Vilanch is totally recognizable, but his "reveal" works well enough. (On the other hand, Jane Lynch and Dave Kopay are total "gay list" celebrity cameos, as guests in a wedding scene where, as noted above, Vilanch's character performs the wedding.) Also, it might be worth noting that Vilanch plays a secondary character's gay uncle, called "Dad" by the "supercute" straight nephew because the uncle raised the kid. The film offers Vilanch's character as a broad/comic corrective to Tru's self-indulgent assumption that she's the only teen in this awful new place with gay parents. Vilanch's casting actually works quite well within this conceit.

Your review reminds me of the time when, as members of your Film Study class, we were invited to a private screening, along with film critics and the rest of the class. My husband and I hurried out after the movie ended and met Gene Siskel, who was waiting at the elevator. He asked us how we had liked the movie and we replied that we thought it was dreadful. He asked "then, why did you stay?" I said that I thought it would be rude to leave and he said that if the filmmakers had been so rude as to make such a dreadful movie, we shouldn't worry about being rude by leaving.

I must echo the delightfully named "snicks" in taking issue with this line in your review:

"This just in: Except for some jocks and those who doth protest too much, today's suburban teens are mostly cool with people who are gay, except those residing in the Palin Belt."

That's simply incorrect. Acceptance of gays seems to vary wildly depending on the suburb, and by no means is the South the last bastion of suburban teenage homophobia.

David Vernon, though, you're utterly wrong: Roger Ebert has reviewed several "gay indie" films. I'm at a loss for a full list, but I do remember recently reading a positive review of the wonderful "The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love." Roger Ebert is blatantly and obviously "pro" gay (ha), misleading grammar aside, and it is hardly his fault that a great number of LGBT films are utter shit. (I say this as a transgendered person who has long been a gay rights activist.)

I try to sit through every movie I start watching, regardless of how painful it is. If nothing else, a taste of the bitter lets me appreciate the sweet even more. I figure that if critics can sit through all the bad movies they have to watch, I can at least watch the occasional stinkers. So it surprised me to learn that you had seen enough at the eight minute mark. Then again, if anyone is qualified to make a decision on a movie that quickly it would be someone who has a track record like yours. If I ever do see this movie (which is unlikely) I'd be shocked if it actually caught my interest. In other words, as seemingly closed-minded as it is for you to stop watching that soon, you have some credibility, and I'm sure your review of it is probably right on.

Hilarious review. Kudos to you for following through on a terrific idea for a review.

I've been to movies so surprisingly incompetently done, so baffling and so excruciating to watch that someone *should* have had the courage to turn them off after 8 minutes. It usually happens when you go to see or rent a movie in perfectly good faith (most frequently a foreign film, a new independent film or one that for one reason or another hasn't been reviewed but is nevertheless generating publicity and notice) and usually it very quickly becomes a test of endurance and patience to even sit through the thing.

It's one of life's unpleasant surprises to unknowingly end up at a turd of a movie. Sometimes you should sit through every minute of it just to be able to describe why it is so unbelievably and gratingly terrible and sometimes, it's not even worth that. You have to treat it as it deserves to be treated and this movie sounds like it didn't deserve even 8 minutes of your time. If it's that unwatchable, the director hasn't held up his end of the contract with you.

Have been watching the movies you have been reviewing lately?

Your reviews for both "Lakeview Terrance" and "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" struck me as off. My inklings have nothing to do with each film scoring such high marks, but the depth of your reviews are lacking.

I would have been in total agreement of your opinions on "Lakeview Terrace" if the film would have ended at the hour mark, but you seem to race through the details of the second half of the film, never giving the readers a solid reason why you felt that portion of the film worked so well.

Your review of "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" felt more like a biography than a critique. There is nothing concrete written about the movie itself. Of course, I may be way off base. Maybe you felt readers might enjoy insight into a man we do not know, but to me it seemed more like you were avoiding the details.

Since reading those two reviews, I have wondered aloud, Has Roger Ebert been watching the movies he is reviewing? And if so, has he been watching them from start to finish?

Now, we have the review of "Tru Loved", on the heels of two reviews I have questioned, and I got to say, I don't like it. You are my favorite film critic. Watched that show religiously since I was nine. Avid reader since you popped up online. Own and read a few of your books. But I don't like to question your journalist integrity. The review (or should I say "comment")is a great read but I don't want this "?!" over my head when it comes to you and your reviews.

When it comes to reviewing a movie I feel all films deserve a fair handshake. I especially think this rule should apply to critics and the opinionated. You shouldn't be badmouthing a flick you haven't seen, especially a man as influential as you. It's tacky. We live in an age where teenagers review the logline of a movie or are just out to hate the film in general. That is why we seek out people like you; a person who respects the medium. It is your job to watch that movie and give it a proper review. You write a review for a movie that you just watch eight minutes of is not respectful. Giving it one star in this star-system world is just mean.

Ebert: Of course I watched them all the way through. Did you read my interview with Neil LaBute, director of "Lakeview Terrace?" He seemed to believe I had. I was imprecise about its second half because readers hate it when I "give away" too much. "How to Win Friends..." was a value-added review. Many of my reviews go into background, my personal knowledge, etc. "The Duchess," for example, where I went so far as to include my sketch of the Devonshire's country house. .You have a narrow definition of what I should do.

A food critic would certainly not be expected to finish eating a revolting dish, so along the same lines, a film critic should not have to waste time on an experience that is offensive on an emotional, intellectual or aesthetic level.

In this case, the movie’s total lack of competence - framing, acting, music, dialogue, story, and so forth – violated all generally acceptable standards, and you responded as any audience member or customer would when confronted with a defective product.

Naturally, making a habit of walking out on films, and not revealing that fact in your reviews until the end, would justifiably upset and alienate many readers, but this seems to be an isolated case, rather than a precedent setting act.

My thoughts are exactly like Keith Carrizosa's, who wrote "I ...was pretty astonished to learn that all that happened in 8 minutes." Roger, not to sound obsequious, but I have to say that your genius OVERWHELMS us!

Btw, I don't think the film will ever reach theatres here in Taiwan. By the tone of your review, it sounded like the film should have been released direct-to-video instead.

Ebert: I estimate I have sat through 0.99975 percent of all the movies I have seen.

You sit through less than 1 out of every 100 movies you see?

Ebert: No, it means I screwed up.

I am somewhat surprised by the comments arguing that you did not act justly towards the film. Tolstoy said that good art infects its audience with an experience, it is the difference between art and all other forms of communication. That infection happens through the skillful execution of the medium as much, or more, than through the content itself.

There is an implied contract that exists between the maker of a film and their audience, that the filmmaker has something, it does not have to be earth shattering, it just has to be real, that the audience should experience. If the filmmaker is so inept that their turn people off with their obvious lack of craft, than they are cheating their audience. Perhaps it is even the duty of the audience to walk out.

Kudos to you, Mr. Ebert, for refusing to waste more than 8 minutes of your life.

@Ebert -

Thanks for responding. Of course Bruce was recognizable. But when ISN'T he recognizable - did you see him in HAIRSPRAY.

I don't disagree with your points here, but I wish you had given it 'til the end to then impart your views, or simply said, "I couldn't get through more than 8 minutes of this movie. I will leave it to you, my loyal readers, to discern why. No stars."

Brilliant of you to publish this "review", Mr. Ebert. I've often wondered how a great reviewer such as you would react to a film that was obviously not worth your time (or by inference, ours). And the sad thought for me is how often you have to push past this point to get through to the meat of a film that is barely treading the competency line. There are so many and you have seen them all. It's nice to learn that even a seasoned professional such as you, has a line in the sand which must not be crossed. I know my sand boundary is a few hundred yards behind yours, but I'm the lucky reader to whom you are in service. So, thanks for going there (and my condolences.)

I am so glad that you chose this for your journal entry, because there are times when I want to give you feedback, but feel that it is not appropriate to shove into your Answer Man column.

Last night, I went to my friend's house to watch a dvd. Just in from karaoke, and a mix of sprightly and loopy from two glasses of red wine, I stalled on the dvd viewing in order to check on your website. Wednesday nights are a joyful time for me, since the new reviews are posted (What happened to Thursday nights? No complaints!)

The first eye grabber... "W"... 4 stars. Aha, very interesting. My friend is watercolor painting on canvas in the background. I'm reading him the review. What is this? A one star review? Must skip a couple reviews momentarily to read that one. Roger, it was excellent. It was honest, and it was very, very funny. The end revelation, which your editor may fear the cause of doom, made it perfect. The tagline for the review, "Not Quite 8 1/2" is your best one yet.

I called out to my friend, "Ooh, a 1 star review. His interest is sparked. "What is it?" Now, Roger, what I am about to tell you, maybe I should keep it to myself. I have defended you time and again from cynical friends of mine. They know that a pick at Roger is a slap at me, but they still get cheap thrills from it. I read #3 to my friend. The "Side A's" and the "Side B's" and the "1, 2, 3's" part. I say, "I don't know if it's because of the wine, but I'm really confused." My friend says, "It's not the wine." I read #4, with the "rose is a rose is a rose" and "sweet as sweet as sweet" lines. I laugh, and my friend, painting a rose at that very moment, says, "I think Roger was wasted when he wrote this review." Of course, faithful follower that I am, I inform him that you haven't had a drink in 30 years. Down to #6. "Don't get all homophilic on me. You know I'm right." My friend says, "Wow, he's letting it all out. He must be on his last legs." I laugh, read the line twice more, and proclaim it an example of how wonderful you are. My friend says, "Well, he is right about that." And, given my choice in friends, I win another small round of victory for Roger's side, because he says that you're right. He finalizes the "Tru Loved" conversation with "Now I have to see that movie!"

Now, I'm not saying you should go and make it a habit to walk out of every piece of crap you stumble into, but your humor and honesty are valid and valued. How can that review be wrong, when it is so much fun to read?

Last week, all alone at the same friend's apartment, and reduced to his selection of dvds, most of which I'd already seen, I decided for light fare, and put in the Will Smith film "Hitch." Maybe I just had too much on my mind to sit through something so trite, but I felt like I was trapped in "Bed, Bath, and Beyond," staring at different colors of plastic shower curtains. Enough was enough, and I pushed eject after about 25 minutes. Was it really that bad? Did I just have too much on my mind to enjoy it? Have I been spoiled by seeing so many 4 star "Roger" films and "Great Movie" titles?

I mentioned that I went to my friend's apartment to watch a dvd last night. It was "Rebel Without A Cause," which of course I'd already seen, but not in a long time. Amazing, how a film from 1955 can be so much more enjoyable than a superficial 2005 film. Peculiar, how some scenes with poor and affected acting in a 1955 film can be completely redeemed by the pumping heart and blazing soul of the film. Tragic, how so many people, if they haven't seen either, will assume a 1955 movie is going to automatically be boring and irrelevant to their lives, and how a Will Smith film has to be worth seeing.

Editor fears be dashed. Attacks on your review be darned. Keep doing the good work.

If a standing ovation is the ultimate approval, then walking out when deemed necessary is the appropriate criticism.

Especially from someone who comes across as innocuous and a lover of all things movie (it comes out in your reviews, that's why I read them).

Quite honestly, I think that your review of Tru Loved was as honest as they come and said what it needed to say. Besides, it would have ruined the punch line to say it first. And that was a funny punch line. I'm sure it has something to do with why when you wrote a book titled "I Hated Hated Hated This Movie", I bought it and read it (and enjoyed it).

Cheers.

I am curious what pushed you to leave this film so early when you've sat through so many other bad ones. Do you feel that your experiences over the past two years have changed what you will and won't sit through?

And as for a very obviously effeminate and "gay sounding" man being in the closet, well, it does happen. Not every lilting voice or lisp is affected. Some guys do put on the "gay voice" and some men, even as teenagers, have it and can't not talk that way. They're distressed by it, try to cover it up, and fail miserably. I can tell you that I did have a lisp as a kid, and I am gay, and I wasn't putting it on to get attention.

I knew a guy in college who sounded just like Andy Dick, claimed heterosexuality, and only nearing thirty finally came out. One of those things, right?

A bad movie is a bad movie, and as a long-time reader of yours, I can't blame you for walking out. Just keep letting us know when you do!

First of all, the small amount of time that it will take for people to read the review is worth it for the great payoff at the end. I think it is perfectly legit to do that. I've now sat thru three 90-minute debates and none of them had a such a satisfactory payoff.

Second, how about this idea . . . Nancy Pearl (Uber-librarian/book goddess of Seattle, who actually has two librarian action figures based on her) has a rule about reading books. I hope I will remember it exactly, but it is if you start a book, you need to give it fifty pages before putting it down . . . UNLESS you are over 50; then you may subtract your age from 100 and that is the number of pages you must read before being allowed to reject a book. Unfortunately, with so many movies being short nowadays, many times you'd have to sit thru more than half of a movie. Maybe for movies, when you are over forty, you double your age and subtract it from 120 (130? 140? 150?) and that is how many minutes you must sit thru?

What are the odds that this movie will be re-edited - and, as seems to be needed according to your review, re-acted and re-written - to ultimately earn a higher score from you, Roger, as did Brown Bunny?

Slim? Probably. Maybe the director would be best making another movie entirely.

Roger, congratulations on making chicken salad of chicken byproduct. Your review is better than it would have been had you toughed out the viewing. I do agree with the opinion that it becomes incumbent upon you to now watch the rest of the movie and do a follow-up; but rather than waste your time, I suggest multitasking with a crossword puzzle, a doodle of Bruce Vilanch, a love letter to your remarkable wife, or whatever worthwhile endeavor for which you care to spare 80% of your attention.

Your fan,

Gary

PS Long ago, I walked out on "...and Justice for All" because I could, well in advance, see that the poor drag-queen sap was doomed, in a plot contrivance often found in "Leave It To Beaver" episodes, but far older. It feels positively liberating to walk out sometimes, doesn't it?

I've yet never walked out on a single movie I've seen in a theater but there are several times I wish that I had.

I've also given up on several movies I tried to watch at home. One was "Beyond Borders", because it made me feel like throwing something at the screen every 10 seconds. What a repulsive, insulting, morally bankrupt, appalling, disgusting movie. I turned it off after about an hour because I couldn't take any more of it.

Another one was "Battlefield Earth" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"- unwatchable and barely watchable.

I think you're right to point out that this movie is silly, unrealistic or pious when it comes homosexuals if you feel that it is so. It obviously doesn't make you anti-gay to dislike a LGBT-related film (or rather a film that happened to be LGBT-related).

I was honestly quite shocked to hear you walked out on a movie, but can't blame you. The purpose of a movie is to entertain, in other words, to give you something to work with while you journey to the ending. Seems like a lot of indie films forget this idea, or they're too in love with themselves that they forget people are going to watch them.

The only movie I ever walked out of was The Musketeer

I did walk out of The Night Listener with Robin Williams, but that was because I was feeling ill.

Or, you could become the 8 minute film critic, in case you need a new career path.

gonzo journalism?

mr. ebert, because of your renown in artfully critiquing movies, your review is able to succeed in communicating the truthfulness of this movie going experience, even though it lacks strict objectivity; favoring style over accuracy.

it seems to make no sense that a movie review can being to claim accuracy or objectivity --or even qualify as a movie review-- should less than 100% of the movie be considered. however, as i understand it, gonzo journalism suggests that journalism can be truthful without striving for objectivity and i felt your method functioned similarly; leaving me with an honest, humorous, albeit twisted appraisal of this movie (minus hallucinogens and profanity).

and so, i am forever indebted should your words, actions and intuitions save me from a horrible assault on the senses.

bravo.

"As sand scooped in hands
Falls through the emaciated fingers,
So does time with a gritty sound run out of me,
My time --- so short and precious.
.....
I can only hear the ceaseless sound of time slipping away"

Its a nice Frankiin quote.

Hey Rog-

This whole thing is hilarious. I've been laughing for the last 20 minutes non-stop. And the best part is that you conduct yourself with a straight face through all of these shenanigans. What a riot. It's too bad that 0.99975 percent (sic) of people don't seem to get your sense of humor. Thanks for keeping me in stitches.

I've got to make one simple comment of my own. I'm thinkin' you can't really call this a movie review unless you've seen a minimum of 50% of the film. Calling your thrashing of "Tru Loved" a review is false advertising. You know you're my homie and all, but waz up wit dat?? Had I paid to read your review, you'd better believe I'd be taking the Sun Times to court to get my pocket change back.

You should have a link on your web site that directs readers Fractional Film Reviews.

Chicago loves you, bro!! See you in Champaign this coming April!

Joe

Part of what distinguishes you as a critic is your eloquence in writing. I'm not sure what's more satisfying: reading a four-star review of a film I plan to see, or reading a one-star review of any film at all. If you didn't get much out of seeing the movie, you usually try extra hard to make up for it in explaining to us how bad it was. That's how you've filled two volumes' worth of bad reviews.

That review was no exception. Skipping out on the movie is unfair to the movie, but not your readers, as long as you come clean at some point. Sticking it in at the end was more amusing than offensive. After all this hullabaloo it might be worthwhile to finish the movie. Perhaps you could just keep watching eight minutes at a time and report on each segment individually, as though it were chopped up and pirated onto YouTube. "'Tru Loved' is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a 'Buffering...' screen viewed for the same length of time."

Roger,

You've probably seen this picture of McCain and Obama. I dare you to TRY to tell me that this isn't the absolute funniest thing you've ever seen!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Most-Emailed-Photos-Republican-presidential-nominee-shaking-hands-Senator-Barack-Obama-presidential-debate/ss/1756/im:/081016/ids_photos_ts/r1772410910.jpg

Luv,

Jaye Mariotti - THE RAT!

I agree with your review and I haven't seen it either, although I did look up the trailer, and barely sat through that. We forget that the critic is himself an artist and should have a degree of freedom to express himself to his audience. Telling us you who are paid to watch this could only stomach 8 minutes is perhaps the strongest indictment of a movie that exists and I am surprised it even got 1 star.

The jokes were tired, the actors failed to convince me they were teens (as opposed to 20+ year-olds pretending to be teens) and the storyline seemed absolutely implausible. In fact, it seemed to have something to offend any sexual orientation. I'm glad I spent more time reading and responding to your review than you did watching its subject. Much more entertaining.

If we define the role of movie critic solely as a person having the function of informing the public about the merits and shortcomings of films, it follows that there is an element of trust or faith involved. The reader has to be convinced of the critic's knowledge and insight (competence, if you will) for him or her to assign a value to a review.

A rookie critic will be expected to explain his or her opinions quite elaborately, whereas a veteran like yourself has proven his worth enough to be able to occasionally just say "this is a(n) [adjective of choice] movie", without presenting (enough) evidence to support his claim.

In this particular case, you basically say "You'll have to trust that my insight and experience are by themselves enough to validate my opinion of this movie based solely on watching the first eight minutes". Given your status as respected critic, there is not much wrong with an occasional review like this except that it ever so slightly deteriorates the trust-relationship between the critic and his public.

So as a review by Roger Ebert it is of no lesser value than any other review, but as a review by itself, it is relatively worthless, since it depends on a existing knowledge of the qualities of it's writer.

Caligula is an AMAZING historical film! You gave the "Mel Gibson kills Jesus movie" 4 stars and defended its violence, Yet a film covering ancient Rome is chastised with zero stars and walked out on. Sometimes in ancient Rome people had their urinary tracts closed and their stomachs filled with gallons of wine and then pierced with a sword. These things just happened. By walking out you missed a great ending. Maybe its time to revisit Caligula with a complete review.

First off, let me just say that I haven't seen this movie, so I can't comment on whether or not your one-star review is appropriate. What I can say is that, while walking out on a film is your perogative, writing an entire review for only eight minutes worth of film doesn't seem very fair. You're essentially telling the reader that only the first eight minutes sucks. But what if the rest of the movie was great? Yes, I read what you said about a film having to seal the deal early on, and I understand that, from your perspective, Tru Loved failed to do that. But who knows? Maybe it was coming around to it. Maybe it would have happened at the nine-minute mark. I obviously don't know this for a fact. But that isn't my point; all I'm saying is that, in my opinion, a movie review should be written about an entire movie, not just the first eight minutes. Then again, who am I to tell a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic how he should do his job? (There's no malice in that statement, by the way. Quite the opposite--I respect you a great deal.)

it's reviewing movies like dis that make one wonder why a Roger doesnt take up fly-fishing or chess or gaffing for werner up a volcano

sometimes, when I watch an eric rohmer movie, after about 8 minutes I always seem to asked myself "What the hell is this?" His films always feel like they were made by a first year film student.

- the pacing of the scenes is all wrong
- its ponderous, there is no plot
- the dialogue is not well crafted
- the framing of the scenes is all wrong

...then something happens about a third of the way into the movie that hooks me... and finally when the movie ends I almost always say to myself "Wow, that was great"

After reading your review and the appended journal entry, I felt compelled to share a similar experience that I've had with a recent entry in the science-fiction genre of video games. To summarize, a new game called Dead Spaec is coming out that borrows heavily from several financially risk-free sources, including Alien and The Thing. A gaming website (G4) has posted the first 15 minutes of the game, and before watching I happened to be read your review of the first Alien movie.

By the time I was 8 minutes in, I stopped watching. Like you, I felt I had all the ammo I needed to realize what sort of mess I had stumbled into. The game opens as though you had walked into a cafe to join some friends for lunch and they are in the middle of a conversation or sentence, with no explanation of what they've been talking about previously. Your character simply begins on a ship that arrives beside another ship, and after some corny dialogue that serves to telegraph a plot that at its bare minimum could be called sci-fi (ship won't respond, lights are off, your girlfriend is on board someplace), you crash into the ship's docking bay and begin. Not 2 minutes later zombie-aliens attack and your faceless character who was not blessed with any personality whatsoever (he remains mute throughout the entire game) is perhaps the sole survivor of his rescue crew as the other members of his team are eaten. The music shifts from "What an amazing view of a ship" to "Oh no, run away from the monster!" in a span of 4 or 5 minutes. Hearing your friends become monster chow you run to an elevator just in time to close the door on some kind of zombie-arm.

I found it difficult to go from amazement to terror in such a short span of time and ended up just laughing when I realized how I was supposed to act and the actual emotions I felt.

Horribly predictable with no build-up whatsoever, I noticed that the game failed because it was relying entirely on the suddenness of monster attacks (they fall out of ceilings and pop around corners) and their creepy half-human look to frighten. Instead it all just seemed to be a cheap haunted-house scare, and I immediately thought of a line in your Alien review and how completely accurate you were:

"A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.

Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all."

I hope that my faith in horror will be restored someday, but I until then I can only feel pity for the people who play this game and feel that it is the scariest thing they've ever seen. I guess standards have changed.

A big fan of yours,
-Matthew

This bugs me. What would have happened if you found out 15 minutes in, that all the stilted dialogue and lousy acting was an act, and suddenly the curtain was lifted, a la "Wizard of Oz," only to find an entirely different movie?

I mean, sure, that probably didn't happen with this movie, but it just seems wrong somehow.

Funny review, but just rubbed me the wrong way, and I'm a big fan.

I I know a movie site or two that shows movies that are playing at theaters , usually independent ones like this one too, and I hope it gets there pretty soon so I can take a look for myself. Of course, I never watch movies there because movies are meant for the theaters, even if it is a multi-plex, but, at those sites the quality is usually very low, being bootlegged.

Is there a way to tell from the seats if a movie is using a digital projector? I may have to feel it out. I can tell when a movie uses digital, but I have to really look carefully (you can kind of see the pixels) and I can always tell what actor is underneath a lot of make-up in movies, for example, but that doesn't really happen much. The last one I did that was with Michael Parks in "Kill Bill: volume 2", where he plays Esteban but also the Texas Ranger from volume 1 and I had to sit through the credits with my friend to show him. I could tell by his teeth, that's usually how I tell (I know it's creepy, but I sometimes find myself studying actors facial features).

The best part of "Caligula" comes towards at the end when Malcolm MacDowell is putting on a play with his horse. The violence, pornography and film-making carnage seem for a little moment to happen around these childish characters who seem again like actors in a production written for them, just as they might have happened around Caeser. If you'd stayed you might have felt sorry for them, as I did.

I also enjoyed the delivery of the line: "You can't marry your sister." "You can in Egypt!" It is, of course, a wretched film emerging out of the corrupt empire which has become of pornography, built on hate instead of lust, violence instead of pleasure, and shock instead of mystery. Perhaps the key culprit is Stanley Kubrick, whose "A Clockwork Orange" made "Caligula" possible, and who introduced a grime rape-as-freedom parable to young people just as they were coming of age. I know because that generation were my parents, and somewhere we've got on a vinyl record the original soundtrack for "A clockwork orange" stashed amidst the Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan records. I've appropriated most of them and it has a certain poignance when I play them in my little room, in my little agricultural college, out in the middle of nowhere at the bottom of the world.

Ebert's review is an accurate guide to how to interpret "Caligula", but it might be worth watching anyway, so long as you promise you'll read Andrew Dworkin's "Pornography" afterwards for de-briefing and de-tox. She is not prim censor as you might think but a vicious rabble-rouser. Not to read her work if you're engaged by the topic is to censor yourself.

There is also, of course, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" which argues that sleeping with a woman whilst she is drunk is rape. Living in a time and place when many of the young women and men I know are drunk all the time, or are flipped out from lack of sleep, caffiene, over-medication, stress, family problems and the usual stuff of poverty and unemployment (let alone alienation and disillusionment in a time of institutionalised corruption), Ebert's film is a beacon of light and hope, and an elegy, to steal a word and philosophy that Ebert stole from Pauline Kael, for an era of gentle love-making free of exploitation and vulnerability that never transpired. The forces which moved Ebert to make this film, despite his professionalism and impartiality as critic, are as ever-present and relevant as ever. We need more of the same.

Ebert: Now that readers who have seen the entire film are beginning to check in, I have decided to boldface their entire comments.
===========================================

I saw the entire film, and it improved after the first 10 minutes. I didn't see anything so objectionable in Tru Loved that it merited a walkout. It was low-budget, which unfortunately is a reality for many filmmakers creating films with positive gay storylines or characters in the United States. Despite that, it had endearing moments, some humour and an infrequently explored story about the dynamic between closeted gay kids and their straight friends in high school. Having graduated just a few years ago from a high school with a prevailing anti-gay sentiment, there was a lot of familiar territory in Tru Loved that is seldom realistically portrayed anywhere in TV or film.

I saw Tru Loved in a theatre with an audience that enjoyed it and where people left the theatre smiling. I won't argue it was a stunning success, since it's a film with easily apparent flaws, but it's not the disaster that you make it out to be.

I find it odd that you chose Tru Loved, of all of the films in your career, to walk out on. Why this and not, for example, Battlefield Earth? Or Speed 2: Cruise Control? Or Basic Instinct 2? Or Crossroads? Or Catwoman? Or From Justin To Kelly? I can think of many movies I enjoyed far less than this one. To date I have only walked out of one movie - Oliver Stone's Alexander, which you gave two stars and a detailed review that pointed out its many flaws. I'd rank Tru Loved well ahead of it. Not fantastic, but not deserving of tremendous scorn, either.

In your review of "W.", the beer O'douls has .5 % alcoholic content, whereas normal beer has from 1-2 1/2 %. So, President Bush could have gotten drunk from them if he chugged them. There is a formula for how a drug affects you: : the amount you take of a drug X how fast you take = its effect on you. It sounded like he just carried one around and didn't drink it, but you can get drunk from O'douls, if he did decide to do that. Let's say early George Bush took 5 minutes to drink a beer, and George Bush the O'doul drinker took 2 1/2 minutes to drink his O'douls, (this may be false logic), but it seems that would mean that it have the same affect as the beer from early George Bush, or if chugged in 1 min 15 seconds...and so forth.

Roger--

"Long-time listener, first-time caller..." You're the best, thanks for everything. I mostly agree, but even when I don't, I know from your review whether or not I'll like the movie (Fight Club leaps to mind--your tepid review had the counter-intuitive effect of sending me directly to the theater against my gut reaction from the trailers). You are more than simply articulate, you have a genuine voice that comes from a definite perspective, and that is of the most use to a movie affecionnado looking for guidance.

Real quick:
-Can't remember if it was Syd Field or Michael Hauge, but some writer mentioned that readers of screenplays only go through the first ten pages (=10 minutes of screen-time, as I'm sure you know) before deciding whether or not to proceed.
-You are a professional, well aware of the three act structure and the ten-minute rule. Life is short, but my only complaint is that you didn't sacrifice an additional ninety to one-twenty seconds of your life to hit that significant mark.
-Having said that, I share others' astonishment and appreciation that you were able to run up such a laundry-list of faults in such a short time. That's all I need to know that this isn't the movie for me, even though I probably do agree with its politics.
-As such an experienced professional with said understanding of structure, you know a dud in the early stages as well as anyone. Your review is honest, and the disclaimer demonstrates that understanding through its placement. To wit: you get the notions of drama, humor and suspense, and its no wonder you employ them in your prose. Your editor's complaint is misguided.

Most importantly:
You saved precious time in your life not wasting time with this film.
I heartily encourage you to reinvest that time reviewing some films that either preceeded your professional start (the original "Wicker Man" (1973) leaps to mind) or somehow slipped beneath your radar (Terry Gilliam's sublime "Tideland" (2005) would be my humble suggestion).

your pal,
-rob

Given that a review brings attention to the film its critiquing, and that your review stands out so much from your typical prose, I imagine you've increased the number of people who are interested in seeing it.

Thank you for sharing this background. The 8 minutes makes me curious about the movie but not curious enough to go to the showing. I might watch the first 8 minutes if it shows up on cable to see what was so bad.

Have there been other movies you wish you did walk out after 8 minutes but stayed for the entire movie? What compelled you to stay? Obligation? Can you name any of those "mistakes"?

Honestly, I think you should see the whole thing. It's bound to be horrible, but surely you have seen as bad or worse? And its your job.

In full disclosure, the trailer is so awkward and bad that I couldn't sit through the whole thing either. I will not be putting it on my netflix cue.

As a critic who ends up sitting through a lot of bad movies that I have to review, but who is never assigned or expected to review anything, I'll openly admit that I've walked out of movies but not nearly as many as I wished I did. I tend to include many of those in my year's end worst list and I almost always mention I walked out, but I always stay to the bitter end if I'm writing a review, just in case there's anything important at the end. I do sometimes walk out of movies at film festivals because they can be hit or miss and time is precious... if a movie just isn't what I expected or I don't feel that it will be necessary to watch/review until a later date, I'll leave and hope to get a chance to see the rest of the movie later. I like this review a lot and I totally can understand where Roger's coming from because when a movie is poorly written, acted or produced, you can usually tell very quickly and that kind of stuff rarely gets better as a movie goes along. In fact, if a filmmaker can't make the first ten minutes of their movie strong enough to keep the viewer involved after that, then they have a problem.

Ebert: You were too nice to say so, but your reviews appear at comingsoon.net. My friend Peter Sobcynski (see above) of efilmcritic.com told me he didn't think it was "done" for one critic to comment in another critic's blog. Au contraire! The more the better, above all on this topic.

I concur with the walkout. I did the same thing (in principle) with "Ishtar," and that was on a $2 rental. Watched the first five minutes, turned it off, took it back to the store, demanded my money back and didn't get it.

I should think that Roger, after 8,000 films and decades as a film critic, should be able to recognize craft (or the absence thereof) in a very short time. I'm a software developer, and when I do code reviews, I don't start by looking at specifically what's going on in the code--I look for evidence of craft. Did the author of the code understand what constitutes best practice? Is the code laid out in a professional way? If there's no evidence of craft, then there's a very good chance that the code isn't going to do its task very well. It doesn't take long to suss out whether the coder is any good at the job.

It's likewise with food. You don't need to eat 100% of the fish to tell that it's gone off--the first bite should tell you so, if not the first whiff of the aroma.

It's likewise with movies. In this case, in order to tell the story, and make whatever rhetorical points the writer and director feel the need to make, the movie has to be watchable. If it's not watchable, then by definition it's a failure--unless the entire point was to be unwatchable. That would make it a raging artistic success, I suppose, but not very profitable for the producers.

Consider the following: when you see a blog posting elsewhere in the Web, or a blog response, if the author can't seem to spell, punctuate, or use proper grammar, do you struggle through the post anyway? I don't. My conclusion is that anyone who doesn't respect his or her own opinion enough to present it clearly doesn't care if I respect it, either. Taken another way, if the author can't get the little things right, what are the odds he or she got the big things right? (Caveat: this rule does not apply to blogs or responses to blogs posted by people for whom English is a second or third language. No one would want to read postings that I might write in Spanish, because they'd be laughable.)

@Robert in Taiwan: it's entirely possible the film should have been released direct-to-landfill.

Re: the commentor who suggested you can get drunk off odouls. Is beer really 1-2% alcohol in the states? Can you get drunk off alcoholic beer in the states?

Our beer is 5-7% and you need to drink a few to get a buzz let alone drunk, George Would need to drink 20 to get the same effect as a couple canuck beers

176 comments before mine - too daunting to read before I write, so forgive any redundancy I may offer.

I wonder if your decision to stop watching was made easier by viewing a screener? If you were screening this film in the company of your professional peers, would you have felt obliged to finish the film to avoid public scrutiny? I wonder if that's why you managed to get through European Gigolo (and thank goodness you did. I can't imagine a better book title than "Your Movie Sucks.") What is the prevalence of film reviewers to not finish viewing films? I have no doubt that in Chicago, it must be quite low, at least in part because if the dean of film reviewers is sitting in the room with you, gutting it out, then everyone else would feel shamed to exit prematurely.

Ebert: In recent years I simply do not walk out of movies, period. Readers have reminded me of about four or five I walked out on, and said so. "Tru Loved" was a big exception.>

Your job is to review movies. Mentally, I am sure that, before you enter the theater (or screening room), you have already blocked out a couple of hours of time in your mind. You certainly have no appointments you need to keep.

Therefore, it is necessary for you to sit through the entire movie in order to write a review that means something to your readers. You are writing for readers, not to "hear" your own voice.

Basically, you've generated a stunt and it is beneath you. Had you opened your review with the fact that you walked out after eight minutes, you might have had some leeway in your commentaries (the review and the Blog).

Many movies get a little bit better as they progress. Perhaps this one wouldn't have, but it is still a requirement of your job to sit through an entire film in order to provide a full and complete and honest appraisal.

Your rules say a critic must tell the truth, not that he must watch the whole film.

Anyone arguing you broke a rule other than lying is guilty of egotism, as they think the entire world is subject to their guidelines.

You bring up something interesting that every critic can relate to: Sometimes you know in the first ten minutes that a picture simply isn't going to get any better. I've been there, and I feel your pain. When that happens, you know that you're in for another 80+ minutes of misery should you choose to stay. Is life too short for that? Perhaps.

My feeling is that there's an important difference between a terrible movie and an unwatchable one. I can deal with a bad movie; if nothing else, it actively engages my hatred. There's value in that because, as you say, it's evidence for a negative review.

An unwatchable movie is something else altogether, hence the term "unwatchable." It's something so painfully inept that you physically cannot keep yourself in your seat, or your eyes on the screen. While I've never walked out of a movie in the theater, I admit having turned off one or two unwatchable movies on DVD then either admitting it, or killing my review altogether. Once a movie was so unwatchable that I hit the double-speed button on my laptop and watched the film in half the time, with everyone talking like chipmunks. I'm not entirely proud of that, but it was a way of forcing myself to watch the unwatchable.

Roger, you were honest, and that's all that is required. Had you written the review as though you'd seen the whole thing, it would be a different story. But you gave us your experience with the film, which is what we expect. It's that honesty that makes so many of us trust and respect your opinion.

Dear Roger,

Whenever anyone talks or writes about anything in public at present, I can't help but think they mean something else (election). Or two things simultaneously. (Or one and a fraction of one) Your journal entry title was similar to the title for your "W" review. Is there a connection?

Your responsibility as a film critic has kept you in your seat for 40 exceptional years. But after 8 minutes you left "Tru Loved". I can't help but draw the connection to how W.Bush is going to blithely walk out on our nation after 8 years, seemingly unconscious of his culpability in engineering the current economic and military mess. You, at least, were honest with us about what you had done and why, claiming full responsibility for your actions. As you mention in your review of "W.", Bush seems incapable of such self-reflection. "He was only following God's will". YIKES!

This time around it is absolutely vital that our decision for president is based on an informed judgment of the man's past and present actions. With that in mind, McCain seems temperamentally unreliable, like our last president.

Ebert: I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your decoding work, there, Anna Marie.

Putting your admission at the end of the review is great.

After all, if someone stops reading after the first 8 sentences, they'll miss the payoff, and be none the wiser.

You have an editor? Who would have the stones to tell you to change your writing? I thought the point of employing you was to get your unvarnished take, not to second guess you. Painters don't have editors. Musicians don't have editors. But everybody thinks a writer needs one. Sigh.

Ebert: She doesn't second-guess me, and no one has ever rewritten me at all, ever, at the Sun-Times. What I write is what you get. Here's what my editors at both the Sun-Times and Universal Press Syndicate do: Correct errors of spelling and grammar; question facts; flag ambiguous wording; provide objective counsel. For example, I posted this blog entry myself, and both editors would doubtless have spotted that sloppy wording that was interpreted by some readers as saying I am anti-gay.

Generally, a full-length review from you for a bad movie is usually far more entertaining than the movie itself, so its neither here nor there for me if you stick it out to the end. A well-written thoughtful review has its own value independent from the movie being commented on, and only a pedant would feel cheated because you didn't want to waste more than eight minutes of your life on a piece of crap. Of course, if it's a question of personal integrity, I think only you can answer that.

I don't feel under any obligation whatsoever to watch a bad movie to the end just because I paid for it. Why throw good time after bad money? That goes for the critic too. You've already answered the two most important questions for me, anyway: can I make the decision to see a film based on your review? (yes) and was the review entertaining? (yes again).

I'm almost ashamed to post this as I hate to imagine you taking valuable time to read the 192nd post!
But my point, after 20+ years of being your fan, is that I believe no one gives a movie a better chance than you, Roger.
So I think it's entirely possible that you're still reading after 191 posts. And if you decide to walk out of a movie, thanks for telling me. I'll pass on that one. Maybe the director will do better next time.
Now, as to how many people caught your quip about being nice to the Amish because we may be trading our gold bars for their food, well...that's another blog, isn't it!

There is a part of me (that part of my heritage that is Scot, perhaps?) that is reluctant to walk out of a movie that I paid for...though I suppose in today's multiplex I could just leave one and slip into another.....but I remember getting into a movie for free when I was in high school and found it so bad that my friends and I walked out, the first and only time I've ever walked out of a movie. It was The Class of '44, a "sequel" to The Summer of '42, and it was awful.

There are, unfortunately, more than a few movies that I've started on DVD that I turned off partway through.

Reminds me of a story my wife tells. She was complaining to a graduate school professor that an assigned book was a useless waste of time. The professor replied "[so and so] said that if you find one valuable sentence in an otherwise worthless book, then reading the whole book was worthwhile." She answered, "Well, he's entitled to his opinion."

I agree with your decision and I found the review delicious. If you were asked to grade a first-year film student's initial oeuvre, you might have been gentler in your word choice, but a commercial release? They deserved it.

One star? I guess that means it's still better than North.

Let's see, you watched the movie for eight minutes and it took me three minutes to read your review...that seems like a poor compression ratio. But yeah, letting us know is definitely the right move. As many movies as you've seen, you could probably make a good 8-minute judgement on a lot of movies, but if you start to do it all the time, I'm going to feel cheated.

Unless...you could turn it into a feature. If you want to review more indie and off-brand movies, make a practice of getting a few DVD screeners and watching each one for 8 minutes. Write a couple of graphs and move on to the next one. Combine 3 or 4 to get a column. I'll bet a lot of small productions would appreciate 8 minutes of your time and a blurb on your web site. And if you can't turn one off after 8 minutes...well isn't that a nice discovery?

Roger--loved your reviews for years--keep it going!

I certainly understand your emotional reasponse to the film. You're entitled to feel how you feel--no one should expect a person to sit through something they are not enjoying. I hated hated hated hated hated hated hated hated Cold Mountain, and still sat through it. Looking back I wish I had walked out.

However, if your ultimate goal is to review the film, I think you should have withheld your review from publication given you only saw 8 minutes. If I were seeing Cold Mountain because I was going to review it for, say, a newspaper, I would have stuck it out if only to add credibility to my review.

I realize, at this point in your career, your credibility is well established, so maybe in this case you get a free pass. Either way, I wish you'd have stuck it out.

I'm curious, Roger: given that you've watched 8,000 movies in your career, presumably there have been others for which you only needed eight minutes to (negatively) assess their competence. What do you think made this one different?

I think as a critic you are responsible, above all, to do what your heart tells you to do. The rest of it comes down to the reader. Are we reading the review for advice on whether or not to buy a ticket? In that case, your take on Tru Loved is that we give it a miss. Or are we reading because the voice we hear in your reviews is so authentic and honest, so familiar and fun to read; because when we read them on Fridays we feel like we're chatting with a friend. In this case, you've once again written a masterful review. That you walked out after 8 minutes and didn't mention it until the end of the review is unimportant: you wrote a great review to read - anything else wouldn't have been as much fun - and that's (much of) the whole point.

1. Regarding the ethics of reviewing a film despite not seeing
anything beyond the first reel, I must admit that I did that myself
earlier this year. I attended a screening of "You Don't Mess With the
Zohan" and twenty minutes in, the projection went kerflooey and
everything shut down. After waiting about 20 minutes or so and being
assured that it would start again soon (not entirely likey since you
could actually smell the melted film in the air), I left. However, I
was son annoyed with what I saw that I did wind up writing at length
about it. The only difference is that I copped to only seeing the
first reel towards the top. That said, I still think I was able to
grind out a reasonably legitimate review.

http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=17094&reviewer=389

And yeah, I did watch the rest of it a couple weeks later after seeing
Indiana Jones again and yeah, my original premise that the rest of the
film would just be more of the same turned out to be sadly accurate.

2. Having not seen any of Tru Loved, I cannot make any claims for its
quality. What stuns me, however, is that you were able to make it all
the way through "Sex Drive," a movie so completely loathsome and
without merit that I only made it all the way through out of
professional obligation. I mean, 20 minutes of Amish jokes is one
thing but couldn't they have come up with one good one--why not have
the obnoxious lothario woo the salon-perfect amish babe "Hey, you look
real good in that black smock"?

As others have pointed out, you walked out of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. There's an important distinction between your review of that flick and the "Tru Loved" flick. In the Seagull review, you admitted up front to walking out after 45 minutes. The review starts off:
"At this point when I walked out of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" -- some 45 minutes into the movie..."

Obviously you waited until the end to admit the same thing in the Tru Loved review. I'd have kept the words, but rearranged their order. Your editor is correct that it's manipulative and disingenuous to spend an entire review trashing a flick and then at the end say "Oh, by the way, I left after 8 minutes". On the other hand, I found the admission funny. But it would have been better to organize it like the Seagull review -- "I walked out after 8 minutes and here's why".

Seagull Review

I firmly believe that critic or not, an audience member has every right to get up and leave a theater or turn off his DVD if a film offends him. Our time is precious, and a film has to earn it.
That said, however, I think you are on shakey ground anytime you decide to publish a review of a film that you have not viewed start to finish. I think I understand your logic in this case. The whole point was to demonstrate that this film failed to offer you any hope that it might get better. Still, if someone were to see only a snippet of your review, say on RT, they would have no idea that you had not viewed 92% of the film.
I very much prefer your preface to the Caligula review. You made your point, and I had a perspective with which to approach your prose.

Hi Roger. We pay you tons of money through your books and the Suntimes and other subscription prices which eventually trickle into your account. You must stay until the end of movies. That's what we are paying you for. On Caligula, we can give you a pass.

A critics job is to be a bomb sniffing robot for the public. You wade through the countless drugery so that I don't have to spend money and time to do that. I'm greatful so I give you some of that money in the form of subscriptions/book purchases. You must stay to the end of all movies you review. That's you're job and that's what I'm paying you for.

I know you've been doing this a long time and your review and opinion probably wouldn't have changed had you stayed the whole time but we still need the critic to stay the whole length of the movie.

Ebert: Here's how I look at it: You pay me to write exactly the review I choose to write, about every movie.

It seems to me that walking out on a movie is a perfectly valid form of review. But eight minutes! That has to be some kind of indoor record. I can recall only two movies that i couldn't make it through. The first was "Mission to Mars". Late one night, after a long day on the job, I decided to catch the late show and unwind. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that I was not sure what I was watching. Satire? Kitsch? An hour in, I realized it was nothing but mind-numbing dreck. I remember thinking that if the second half was the "The Godfather Parts 1&2" put together, it still wouldn't be worth it. As I walked through the empty lobby, the manager was closing down the concession stand. I told him I thought I had just paid ten dollars for the privilege of having needles thrust into my eyes and was there anything he could do for me. He laughed and gave me a free soda.

The other? "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". After that mess, i was stopping strangers on the street and begging them to avoid seeing it - i know we disagree greatly on this one.

You know that you may have just created the most famous eight minutes in movie history. We should all remember that critics inform as well as review. so, in this regard, you have done your job. The truth is, I'm more interested in what you have to say about a film than whether you recommend it or not. I will watch those eight minutes very closely.

The real question is, did you get a free soda?

I've always held the opinion that in order to criticize a film, you must have actually seen the film. I know too many people who slag on movies that they haven't seen, which is given away when you start asking for details. I've stuck to this for many years, and my equivalent is turning off a movie I'm watching at home. That allows me to criticize the parts I've watched, but not the others. There are, however three films that made me get up, but sit back down when the person with me pointed out my rule. One's Twister, where I got sick of the bad formula and wanted to leave after 20 minutes, but was persuaded to stay, wrote down all the future plot developments on a napkin, handed it to my friend and said, "This is what will happen in the movie." I was off by only one; no one on the good guy team died. Another's Requiem For A Dream, which has the most disturbing extended sequence I've ever seen in a film (the montage towards the end), and which made me feel uneasy in a way I've never felt while watching a film, and I've seen Salo and 5 of the Police Academy movies. The one that almost did it for me was Toys, the Barry Levinson film that so insulted my intelligence and my sensibilities that it almost made me leave in anger. What a waste of talent and idea with nothing but sets to save it -- and that's no excuse (sets are easy, execution's hard). It seemed as though the filmmakers realized they had nothing but sets and let the rest fall to pieces. I asked and received my money back after watching it -- the only time that's happened. How you could stand to watch it, let alone give it two-and-a-half stars, is beyond mortal ken. Is it possible that the film you almost watched ten minutes of made you angry at its incompetency? It's unwillingness to be nothing but message and moral, which is fine to have, but not when it's slammed into your face in an amateurish style? I'd like to know other films you almost walked out on, and why. Not just the "I Hated this Film" movies, but ones where you had to physically keep yourself from leaving.

The only movie I ever wanted to walk out on after 5 minutes was Jean Claude Van Damme's THE QUEST. I was employed as a movie theater "print-checker" at the time, so I *had* to sit through the whole thing. After what seemed like 3 hours of mindnumbing MORTAL KOMBAT-style fighting, I realized that my original inclination to leave was correct.

It's a shame that you left the movie early. It is revealed at the 9 minute mark that the proceeding footage is the work of a character who is an unsuccessful aspiring film maker. It's an intentionally terrible film-within-a-film. At the ten minute mark you realize that the debacle that you just witnessed is the set-up for a wonderfully scripted, acted, and directed movie. Wouldn't you feel like an ass if this were true? Since you have literally no idea if this is true (or if there is some other twist that you are unaware of), haven't you betrayed your duty as a film reviewer?

A parallel - "She's stupid. Of course, I've only spoken to her once, briefly." Is this fair?

I absolutely think you did the right thing. And, as others have said, the only ethical question is whether or not you reveal that you did not sit through the whole mess.

I never give a book more than a hundred pages to make its case. If it hasn't proven itself by then, I drop it. Same goes for a film. The max I'll give ANY movie is 10-15 minutes. Less if it's truly wretched from the get-go. When an artist creates, he is implicitly saying "What I've made is worthy of your time and attention." As with any other extraordinary assertion, the burden of proof lies with the proclaimer. If the artist doesn't know enough (or can't be bothered) to give his audience a reason to stick around, he's failed. Any filmmaker who hasn't mastered that fundamental task needs to go back to school or find another pursuit.

A few years ago a relative of mine had a minor stroke that went unnoticed for a few weeks - looking back on it, we all thought her personality had changed abruptly, but only in a minor way. Turns out, it was related to the stroke. I've been a faithful reader of your reviews for many years, and have noticed a strangeness to your recent reviews (past month or so) that reminds me of my aunt. Roger, are you ok?

Also, way to stereotype "jocks" as being homophobic. So silly.

Your review made me curious about this movie. Maybe I should watch it just to see how not to do it.

On the issue of walking-out of a movie:

- I loved the surprise ending in your review. I think the revelation at the end makes your negative review even stronger. It's like the last punch in a boxing match.

- On the ethical side, I think professional critics should watch a movie, at least half of it, before writing a review. We all know that it's very hard to make movies, especially indies. As a viewer, I pay for the movies, so I expect a certain standard. If I don't get it, I have the right to walk out (I would even demand my money if I could, see the related South Park episode). But critics watch movies for free and they are paid to analyze the movie. So I think there should be a minimum amount of time they should sit through, e.g. 25% of the movie.

Roger,

Your job is to see and review films so that I can then take your advice to watch a film or not. Occasionally, I do disagree with you. IE, when I happen to see a movie before your review or when some close friends recommend one.
However, I do not ask or require you waste your time on films that obviously will be a waste of the precious minutes we have here. So, In showing such great fore sight I would like to recommend you for a raise.

Your Boss,
Joel.
p.s. I do not pretend to sign your pay checks, but I like to think I contribute to them.

I enjoyed the review, for sure. A few minutes later, however, I thought about Easy Rider. I mildly liked that movie, but only started really loving it as the credits rolled. So I thought Mr Ebert should've considered Tru Loved as a whole before passing judgement.

But then I realised, Easy Rider was a strange fruit, and Tru Loved must be just plain rotten.

Roger,

I would, under the best of circumstances, have a hard time questioning your judgment because it has proven so sound in the past. And I'm not going to do it now. I say, if a film can't make its case fairly early, and if it makes the case AGAINST being seen by anyone with (1) a brain, and (2) even elementary taste, then walk out as early as you need to. And feel free to pring those reviews. Frankly, Tru sounded interesting based on the IMDb summary, and I am delighted to know that on the small chance that it makes it to Tulsa, I won't bother to go. And in fact, I will make a point to recommend NOT seeing it to anyone who mentions that it sounds interesting, etc. I have found your reviews variously inspiring, hilarious, witty, dramatic, sarcastic, helpful, essential--but never dishonest.

At the prices we pay to see films, battling crowds with no manners who are armed with cell phones, I expect to be drawn into the film fairly early and NOT disgusted, confused, bored, or nauseated. That's not too much to ask from the 20th century's contribution to art. Heck, I'll take amused and mildly interested for some films. But--as you have said before--a film that would better serve to be cut up and turned into mandolin picks? I'll pass--and I'll thank you for passing and telling the tale.

This morning in the paper I saw an ad for The Express with "Inspiring!" printed large across the frame, attributed to Roger Ebert. Ebert did give the movie three stars, and used the word "inspiring" in the first sentence, but I don't know where that exclamation point came from. There isn't one in the entire review.

I guess my point is that if a film's marketing team can pluck one word from a lukewarm review and tack on any punctuation they choose to embroider it as an enthusiastic endorsement, that critic can choose review all or any portion of the film. It's the same basic principle, only Ebert gave full disclosure, whereas movie ads don't bother explaining the context of the quotes they take from reviews.

Ebert would probably know if there's ever been a more egregious example of a quote or phrase from a negative review being presented as praise. I'm sort of curious.

I've only ever walked out of The Cowboy Way, after around 10 minutes. I also left about halfway through The Return of the King, but that was only because I went with a frustrated LotR purist who walked out first, and he was my ride. I thought it was okay.

"A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man"

Having in present instance remained true to this .....

I have absolutely no problem with your review of "Tru." First, it is not as if this is your usual practice. It is an exception, and in this case evidently it was eminently justified. Moreover, I see no pressing reason for you to "confess" earlier in your review that you watched only 8 minutes of the movie. As you note, that bit of information is the capper: this movie was so incompetent that it made roughly one major gaffe per minute. Do we imagine the level of competence would increase materially afterwards? After all, if such competence were available to the filmmakers why didn't they deploy it here?

My own "life is too short" rule for movies is 20 minutes--about the length of a reel (if there were reels any more). If one's interest has not been piqued by that time it is not likely to be. However, I make exceptions where basic competence is at issue, as it is here. Your motto is: "A movie is not what it's about, it's about how it's about it." If the subject can be anything, it is only the "how" that is at issue when reviewing a movie. Now it seems to me that there are two ways the "how" can fail: by its attitude towards its subject (the "what"); by its basic technical command of the language of drama and cinema. A movie that fails in the first respect deserves (probably) to be viewed to completion; redemption is (almost) always possible. However, a movie that fails in the second respect does not even rise to the level at which a coherent attitude ("how" in the first sense) can be appropriated by the viewer. In such a case there is no point in viewing past the time at which this basic incompetence becomes apparent. No redeeming "how" can rise from this foundation. Basic technical competence is not sufficient for a good movie, but it is necessary, and unless there is some reason to suppose that the lack of competence itself is an element of the attitude towards the subject (as there is not here) one can safely consign such failures to the "Don't let this happen to you" of film school without spending another 90 minutes of one's life searching the wreckage for survivors.

I'm late here in the postings of this but just can't resist. I laughed out loud when I read the final words of your review today, in fact my laptop bounced off my lap because of it. I've never been so entertained, enlightened, and felt so redeemed by a movie review. I've walked out on a few myself (movies), but always feel guilty, as if I'm not giving my due to the artists. And it brings up the wonderful question of how many movies had you walked out on in the past. I'm surprised so few. And I've always wondered how you select movies to view, since you surely can't watch every single piece of drivel there is.
I loved the review as much as I love a good article or book or show. It was entertaining and refreshing, especially in this election year time of hiding ones reactions, and the true nature of what they do. Thank you.
And let me also say something I have always wanted to say, but of course have no audience for it. I love your critiques, and I love them because I learn how to interpret my reactions to the movies I see from your analysis. You always seem to put the "oh yeah, that's it" finger tip on something I know that stinks, but don't quite know why. Or better yet, for something that is transforming, and then joyful to ruminate on why. Simply reading your reviews has taught me more on critiquing than any books, courses, or graduate school or anything else that I've ever encountered. Best to you,
R-

I have what I call the 10-minute test. If the movie sucks for the first ten minutes, my research indicates there is a 99.7% possibility the the rest of the running time will pass similarly. Your review is valid. You reviewed what you saw. Believe me, if this movie suddenly turns into "Jules et Jim" at minute nine, I'm sure the word of mouth will be deafening and someone will let you know you should give it another chance. I would not encourage you to do this kind of review often. I mean, if you hadn't stayed to the end of "Caligula", you wouldn't have heard the quote from the lady that made the best line of your essay.

Your review was terrible. I didn't read the whole thing- it was perfectly obvious from the outset.

No, I'm kidding. I can't imagine why someone would think your review was dishonest... what difference does it make WHERE in the review you said you only watched 8 minutes. Any writing that creates an "aha moment" in the reader is good writing. Perhaps your detractors are such big fans of Citizen Kane that they require all art must begin with the end.

I believe I remember you writing about Ozu's occasional lack of continuity between shots... when a cut to a different camera angle shows something that doesn't make sense spatially with what we just saw. The same would be true with that picnic table shot. I wonder why we forgive that with someone like Ozu but not in terrible movies. I feel that once I'm "locked in," a movie can almost do no wrong. Strange though, that in and of itself there's nothing wrong with a lack of continuity between shots.

My father passed away when he was 70, his father when he was in his late 60s. I am 59 and this year I am retiring. I could work longer and it would certainly make my spouse more financially secure if I did. But I will retire this year because I know that time is of the essence; time to do some things I've been meaning to do, should do, want to do. More work would mean more money ... more money would mean ... nothing.

It used to be my custom to finish every book I ever started. I would sit through any movie no matter how bad because I felt that truncating my observation would somehow cheat either me or the artists. But now, I throw the book down or I turn off the tv or return the dvd to Hollywood Video once I determine it is wasting my time. Life is too short,even for a critic with a conscience, to waste on a bad movie. If a movie is good, it will be good from the get-go.

I wish I could be paid back the time I spent watching bad movies. I feel like putting a citizen's arrest on some of these directors and producers who stole not just my money but, even more valuable, my time.

This feels right on par. You sat in a theater in an effort to watch and perhaps enjoy a film you would eventually review. You watched for eights minutes, considered it a failure, reviewed it for film-goers and ultimately revealed you had witnessed all those cinematic follies in only the eight minutes you could stand to watch. There is no deception involved here. I am interested in watching (the first eight minutes of?) this film when it is released on DVD. You did nothing to dissuade me from watching the film objectively if and when I get around to doing so. Reading you simply makes it less likely I will do so sooner rather than later. To anybody who feels duped, simply do what you would do with a film, reset the review and start again from the beginning. Worry not, Mr. Ebert. Thank you for your craft.

P.S. In response to Will's comment about "kicking a movie when it is down." I disagree with you. Motion pictures as projects should not elicit pity in (re)viewers. Should I hold major blockbusters in wide release to a higher standard than low-budget films with limited distribution? Films have accomplished immensely with very little, and many have failed miserably with much more. And I don't mean box office figures.

I remember, just this year, attending a showing of Tarsem's The Fall at a theatre only a block away from where I live. It was later at night and there weren't many people at the showing. Of course in the daytime there probably weren't many people attending anyway as it wasn't a mainstream film by any means. Now I happened to enjoy the film immensely as it is surreal poetry on film. Definitely my cup of tea; but most people walked out of this film, and at the end the only people that were left was myself and two women.

I wondered what experience these people had with film. This was cinema as art blasted across the screen in great visual beauty in the vein of visionary filmmakers of past. It also had an interesting story to go along with it. I could never relate to people walking out on it. If anything I just wanted more.

On the other hand after seeing the trailer for Tru Loved I could completely understand you walking out on it. Not because of the topic but because of the obvious incompetency, which is even apparent in the trailer. Maybe the movie did get better. Maybe it grew worse, but you have to go with your gut and sometimes it's too terrible to bare. With all your film experience I'm surprised you didn't even walk out earlier and on more films. I find when I watch beautiful filmmaker's visions (such as Bergman) it's hard to be tolerant of, what in my opinion, are lesser films. So I applaud you for making it through all the films you reviewed! You should be allowed to walk out on some of those.

The review is fine as written, but the star rating is misleading and unfair. While there may be no reason to suspect the film improved after the eight minute mark, there's no way to know for sure if the film wasn't observed in full. Your review accurately details how bad the movie was, to the point of having to walk out. But, in my opinion, wouldn't this logically warrant a "not rated" or "incomplete" in place of a specific star rating?

Mr. Ebert:

After reading your review twice, I still don't see why you stopped watching the film. I get that it was amateurish - was it really worse than the early John Waters films, which you did sit through, despite many more reasons to leave? (Full disclosure: I did, in fact, walk out on Pink Flamingoes, though I now wish I hadn't. My sensibilities were more tender then.)

I've sat through a great many of the amateur theatricals you compare this film to, and often I've found something to enjoy, or learn from, or just to smugly smirk at. Isn't it possible that Bruce Vilanch could have surprised you with a fine performance?

I appreciate your honesty, and quite frankly the review was entertaining and well-written (as always). But real people spent real years of their real lives working on this film, and I still don't understand why that wasn't worth a bit more of your time.

As I age, I find my ability to be the best at everything I do to be consistently diminishing. Maybe it's the complex nature of our world today, or maybe I'm cramming too much into each day. Either way, in the spirit of Chicagoans always having "a guy" - I often need to trust the advice of service professionals.

Those most valuable to me not only diagnose and cure what ails me, but explain why in terms I can understand. I rarely ask for that explanation, but always appreciate it nonetheless. The exceptional experiences are those that go beyond the requested, finding and fixing problems previously unidentified and teaching me something as a result.

This exercise has made what would be a forgettable "bad movie" review into something much more valuable. As my trusted guide to the films I may or may not see, Mr. Ebert has given, unprovoked, some precious insight into his expertise. 8 minutes or not, I am impressed by the honesty with which this was conceived. If only I could get that from my lawyer...

Roger,

A quick random side note: how often are you able to check out and review films that aren't pre-screened for the critic circle? There are many movies from the recent and not-so-recent past that I'd love to read your personal take on (i.e. for example, last week's latest horror remake "Quarantine").

If it's true that this is only the second movie you've ever walked out of, then I think, by looking at the incredible number of movies you HAVE watched, that you've earned the right to walk out of a real stinker. I would naturally assume that years of viewing experience helped inform your decision.

As for the review, it could be seen as "clever writing" to wait until the end to reveal how much of the movie you didn't watch. But you did tell the truth, and that is admirable.

When I read of people who are angered by your reviews, including this one, I think they are trying to put the responsibility of THEIR opinion on you, which is unfair. By way of your review, you have presented your opinion, and now it's left to them to form their own.

I think you did the right thing.

While I find the "idea" of your review funny and not unworthy (I have turned off a couple films, usually the 20 minute mark), I think in actual application it was a mistake. People have come to expect from you a certain level of quality and professionalism, which includes at the least reviewing a whole film, not just a part. I think by doing this you cheapen your previous reviews to an extent, and definitely cause future concern over your standards. If you only wanted to watch 8 minutes, bravo, more power to you, it's your right, blah blah, but you shouldn't have posted a review of the film that will now stand along side your other work. You are a film critic (which you need no reminding from me), but you are also, dare I say, a great film critic, and this particular act was not worthy of a mediocre one.

Your review and the resulting fall-out reminds me a little bit of the time that a local food critic felt she had to go back to a pretentious dump with horrible, expensive food three times in order to write a fair review. If she had asked me my opinion first, I could have saved her the trouble. (Her eventual review was entitled, "Don't Eat Here.")

In my life, there have been several occasions, including a movie or two, which have cost me only a few excruciating minutes of time, but about which I have spent hours speaking, mainly because of the horrible life-altering impact these few minutes have had. As many have commented, Mr. Ebert, you've earned the right to walk out after 8 minutes- life is much too short to sit through execrable movies- and as far as I am concerned, you've done us a public service by writing the review. I sincerly thank you for the warning.

I forgot to make a point in my first message--mainly because I just thought of it today.
Often when incompetently-made films crop up, they turn out to be associated with an ideology it is politically incorrect to disparage (i.e. it's about women, homosexuals, or a racial minority). Harold Bloom has written eloquently on this problem in the realm of literature.
Do you think a film of this level of competence would have gotten funding, let alone enough attention to draw a serious critic like Roger, had it not been a homosexual film? I'm reasonably certain the answer is 'No.'

I started reading your review of "Tru Loved" but found its merits so questionable that I stopped reading after the eighth word.

You adnit in the post that you saw this picture on a DVD screener, and not in a theatrical or screening room situation. I'll infer from this that you saw it by yourself, whether at home or in an office; no one to tell you "Stick around, Rog, you're no better than the rest of us." This in turn poses the question: if you had seen the film in a more communal situation, would you have given it more than 8 minutes? And that in its turn poses yet another question: since the distributor didn't make the film available for advance screening by the other critics, why not simply employ your usual practice of ignoring it altogether - you know, the way you do with major studio releases that don't screen in advance? That 'give an indie a break' excuse you gave in the post doesn't really hold here; if the 8.5 minutes you spent watching it was wasted, than so by extension was however much time you spent writng your dismissal of it (to say nothing of the time you're now spending reading all of us; by now you probably wish you'd just handed it off to Bill Stamets). BY the way, I was kind of disappointed that you used your shutout rule as an excuse to not see AMERICAN CAROL; it might have made an interesting companion piece to your wholly expected rave for W. That won't happen now, of course, because CAROL has flopped and is gone,and I'm pretty sure that W will meet the same fate, for the same reason: 'preaching to the choir'. Might've been kinda fun...

Good for you, walking out. I walked out of "Mandingo." And I walked out of "The Cheerleaders" when I saw someone I knew walk in.

I wonder if your editor was just worried that you had only stayed for eight minutes but put down the whole 100 minutes on your time card :)

I wonder if your editor was just worried that you had only stayed for eight minutes but put down the whole 100 minutes on your time card :)

I always try to finish a movie to the end, but sometimes a movie can be so terrible that it takes it's toll on your patience, the only movie I've ever walked out on was "Full Frontal", because it was directed by Steven Soderbergh I stayed for about 40 minutes thinking that it would get better until I couldn't take it anymore, sometimes it is wise to go with your instinct.

I go to the movies in the hope of being entertained. It's hit or miss. I get bummed out if after finally getting a chance to go to the theatre I end up watching a movie that I don't like (or amongst a bunch of people I end up not liking).

After I go to the movies, I look for Roger's review. It's not always in this order; sometimes I'll read a review first, especially if I'm not planning on seeing the movie. Now that might not make a lot of sense to those few of you who have gotten all the way down to this part of the comments section, looking to see if your comments were added and seeing mine here instead. But as good as Roger is (and he's great, you don't need me to tell you that), I mostly enjoy making up my own mind as to how good I think a movie is and sometimes Roger and I disagree.

My POINT is, I read Roger for the same reason I go see movies: to be entertained. And my eyes usually light up when I see a review flagged with a single star.

Your review reminded me of Dorothy Parker's review of George Bernard Shaw's play, Getting Married, in which she was so bored that she nodded off during the first act and then "went for a cigarette to the street. And somehow, once out in the open, I did not return for the second act ..." She blames it all on Robert Benchley but most of us don't have that excuse.

At a film festival recently, I only made it through about 25 minutes of a movie -- one that will be released in about a month -- and finally felt so irritated with the film that I left. I've been wondering whether it's fair for me to write about the movie, and if so, how I should do it. Your Tru Loved review and the accompanying blog entry have helped me think about this more clearly, and given me a sense of freedom to mention, honestly, exactly what happened and how I felt. Thanks very much.

There is one big problem with the review itself (although, judging from the 2 min. trailer I just watched, you're probably right on about the film's quality): Your assertion that, "except for some jocks and those who doth protest too much, today's suburban teens are mostly cool with people who are gay" is sorely misinformed. Yes, even outside of "the Palin Belt." Yes, even in the bluest states in the Union. Please trust me on this one.

Roger,

I hate to change subjects, but your review of Sex Drive has me panicked.

I'm pudgy, I have zits, and most people say that I have a winning smile. If I leaned up against a GTO, odds are, I'd look pretty damn cool.

Despite all that, I'm still a virgin. And I'm 20.

Twenty! The best two years of my life are gone, and I'm standing on the brink of packing it in so I can begin searching for the elusive action figure of Steve Austin's boss.

What am I doing wrong?

Ebert: You are thinking of a GTO instead of a Golden Hawk.

I can't believe you'd read this far, but yet I'm posting a message. As with many things, I'm agnostic on whether or not you should have shut off the movie after 8 minutes. I am intrigued, though, by your reasons for skipping the rest. You have sat through many horrible, morally offensive, disgusting films. But you felt the need to "leave" one that, from your review, was merely very poorly done (amateurish?). As a moviegoer, if I'm sitting there in a comfortable seat with a big box of buttered popcorn and some malted milk balls, I'd stay for that, but definitely walk out on the new Texas Chain Saw Massacre, etc. Interesting.

When choosing a movie, I rely on Roger's reviews. I don't focus on the thumbs, the stars, or the overall assessment. I rely on the detail he puts into the reviews. By candidly expressing what he likes and dislikes about a film, he leaves it up to me to decide if those are things I like or dislike.

Location... Location... Location! If the review began with the walkout, aspiring film makers might have dismissed the rest of the review and not learned a few valuable things about their future craft.

Roger sat through The Brown Bunny. Ever since, I have wondered how bad a movie would have to be for Roger to walk out? This movie probably didn't achieve the horrific nature of Caligula. It seems like it took a perfect storm of many bad elements.

If the actors seeming like they are reading lines is a reason to walk out of a movie, no one would ever make it to the end of a film with William Hurt, Keanu Reeves, or Kevin Costner. The unnatural way those guys deliver a line destroys the suspension of disbelief.

For years, I wondered why they talk like that when they act. Then I finally saw each of them during various interviews and found that they talk that way in real life. Who'd-a-thunkit?

Sorry, you can't review a movie without watching it, and dare I say it, all the way through. It's not fair to your readers, who might not get all the way to the end of your review. I often stop reading a review after just a few sentences becuase I don't want to be exposed to too much of a movie plot before I go see it. I want the experience to unfurl before me. So even if reading more than 75 percent of your review I wouldn't know it was based on only 8 minutes of viewing. I actually think its a little bit journalistically unethical not to watch the whole movie (read the whole book, watch the whole TV show) before reviewing it. Would we judge a presidential debate after the first eight minutes? Maybe, but that, too, wouldn't be fair.

Most of us "wish" we had the job of watching movies and disclosing your opinions about them for a pretty penny. You are free to do whatever you want, but if you received a full article's salary on a review for only seeing 8 minutes of it (does that include opening credits?) is, frankly cheating on the job and being dishonest. Perhaps, and indeed probably the rest of "Tru Loved" is appallingly awful (that phrase still being an opinion), but surely you must realize your 8-minute-investment review will be combined with all the others to generate a "Tomato Meter" rating. What if all those negative reviews were also based on just a few minutes of the film? I'm reminded of my mother telling me as a child not to pick flowers in the park "because if everyone else did it there would be no more flowers" even though I was certain I was the only one being "naughty."

I did like reading your review, but it was a shock to discover you gleaned ALL those points based on the first 8 minutes is hard to believe, although I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You say that laughter and orgasms are hard to "act" onscreen, to which I immediately recall from several "classic" B&W older (and usually foreign) films the most obviously phoney and forced (and usually awkwardly overdubbed) laughs I've seen. As for films having to grab you in 8 minutes, MOST of the "artier" films I like and require full viewer investment fail miserably at winning over most of the people I know who suffer through them. I love "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Tarkovsky's "Solaris" and I leave it to you to explain how your same approach to "Tru Loved" applied to these films would not work if the majority of the planet trying to watch them can write the valid opinions "the film bored and failed to engage me as I watched a bunch of men in ape suits jumping around sans dialog for 20 minutes" and "a man walks around and looks at water for several minutes," respectively. Would YOU dismiss a review of either of these films based on just the first 8 minutes. Would you prefer to know that up front?

Most of us don't have the luxury of chosing what to do and not do during the course of a job. I teach, and I can't ignore one student simply because he or she has a poor attitute and doesn't want to learn or show any respect. Other jobs can be mind-numbingly repetitive, but you don't clock out 90 minutes early and expect to get paid for the next few hours. One can imagine a student assigned an essay on a book and electing to summarise the whole book on just the first paragraph, citing you as an example. If you did not want to watch the film, why did you write the review? If you were just itching to write about it, then why not write it as an opinion piece "Why I walked out of this film" instead of submitting it as a review. For everyone else, if there is somethign about the job you don't like, you endure it, try to fix it, or quit.

I, myself, rarely - if ever - don't finish watching a film I intended to see. I know I never walked out of a theater. The most recent film I suffered through was "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" which you loved, but I was surprised to find did nothing for me. This is neither here nor there, so just do your JOB - or don't!

Most of us "wish" we had the job of watching movies and disclosing your opinions about them for a pretty penny. You are free to do whatever you want, but if you received a full article's salary on a review for only seeing 8 minutes of it (does that include opening credits?) is, frankly cheating on the job and being dishonest. Perhaps, and indeed probably the rest of "Tru Loved" is appallingly awful (that phrase still being an opinion), but surely you must realize your 8-minute-investment review will be combined with all the others to generate a "Tomato Meter" rating. What if all those negative reviews were also based on just a few minutes of the film? I'm reminded of my mother telling me as a child not to pick flowers in the park "because if everyone else did it there would be no more flowers" even though I was certain I was the only one being "naughty."

I did like reading your review, but it was a shock to discover you gleaned ALL those points based on the first 8 minutes is hard to believe, although I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You say that laughter and orgasms are hard to "act" onscreen, to which I immediately recall from several "classic" B&W older (and usually foreign) films the most obviously phoney and forced (and usually awkwardly overdubbed) laughs I've seen. As for films having to grab you in 8 minutes, MOST of the "artier" films I like and require full viewer investment fail miserably at winning over most of the people I know who suffer through them. I love "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Tarkovsky's "Solaris" and I leave it to you to explain how your same approach to "Tru Loved" applied to these films would not work if the majority of the planet trying to watch them can write the valid opinions "the film bored and failed to engage me as I watched a bunch of men in ape suits jumping around sans dialog for 20 minutes" and "a man walks around and looks at water for several minutes," respectively. Would YOU dismiss a review of either of these films based on just the first 8 minutes. Would you prefer to know that up front?

Most of us don't have the luxury of chosing what to do and not do during the course of a job. I teach, and I can't ignore one student simply because he or she has a poor attitute and doesn't want to learn or show any respect. Other jobs can be mind-numbingly repetitive, but you don't clock out 90 minutes early and expect to get paid for the next few hours. One can imagine a student assigned an essay on a book and electing to summarise the whole book on just the first paragraph, citing you as an example. If you did not want to watch the film, why did you write the review? If you were just itching to write about it, then why not write it as an opinion piece "Why I walked out of this film" instead of submitting it as a review. For everyone else, if there is somethign about the job you don't like, you endure it, try to fix it, or quit.

I, myself, rarely - if ever - don't finish watching a film I intended to see. I know I never walked out of a theater. The most recent film I suffered through was "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" which you loved, but I was surprised to find did nothing for me. This is neither here nor there, so just do your JOB - or don't!

How did I feel once I reached your revelation that you had watched only 8 minutes of the movie? My first reaction was disbelief; I thought I had read the passage wrong, and I had to go over the sentence a couple times before it sank in. Then I felt a bit betrayed, as if the review had been dishonest. In essence, I had the reaction your editor was trying to avoid: for me, the end of the review invalidated everything I had read up to that point.

Whenever I read one of your reviews, I assume that you've seen the movie in its entirety. I began reading your review of "Tru Loves" with that assumption. There's a level of trust there. I suggest that, if you walk out of a film in the future, you should disclose this upfront.

I love reading you, and best wishes!

That was an interesting review, and I think that the admission you made about having only given it 8 minutes says a lot about the production/delivery of the movie itself. It cannot, obviously, be expected that you were criticizing the story itself, as you didn't sit though enough of the movie to know how the story progresses. Still, a certain competence in production is to be expected by any film-maker that is asking you to spend any amount of time watching his/her work.

I've watched a lot of movies over the years (some good, some really bad), and have only walked out on one. I believe it was called 'I've got the hookup'. They also failed to make a case (after 20-odd minutes) for me to spend the next hour or so watching their movie. I believe I was within my rights to tell all my friends that the movie stank, at least for the first 20 min.

NOTE: In your answer to comment #9 above, surely you meant that you watched 99.975 percent of all the movies you've ever seen, and not 0.99975 percent. If you meant the latter, then there is a problem. :D

I've only ever walked out on 3 films in my life; two because there was something wrong with them, and one because there was something wrong with me. The latter film was "The Descent", which I went to see on a whim on a weeknight after an overlong workday. Before the cave-dwelling creatures even showed up, I found that the claustrophobic shots of the cast worming their way (or failing to) through tiny passages far underground were far too effective for me to take in my state of mind at the time. I still haven't watched the whole film, but I have the DVD and good intentions.

The stinkers were "The Everlasting Secret Family" and "Saw III". I had not, and still have not, seen any other "Saw" movies. About a half hour or so into "Saw III", after the sixth or seventh murder or mutilation, a part of me realized "I don't want to have this in my brain tomorrow" and I convinced my date to leave. "Family" was simply inept; I cooled my heels in the lobby while my date sat it through to the bitter end. (He admitted afterward that he should have left when I did.) Today I'd love to see what Rifftrax or Cinematic Titanic (MST3K alumni) could do with it.

I completely support your decision to leave after only the first 8 minutes. Some commenters have said that your job is to watch movies; I disagree. Your job is to tell the public your opinion of movies. When served a curate's egg you don't need to eat the whole thing to know that it's bad.

It's an eye-opener for me to see all these Implied Rules For Critics. See Every Movie To Its Conclusion. Or If You Don't, Tell People Upfront. Don't Give Most Films Three Stars. Don't Give Away Anything. Don't Leave Us In A Vacuum. Don't Concentrate On Characters To The Extent Of Writing Biography. Don't Concentrate On Plot To The Extent Of Blueprint-Synopsizing.

8,000 films into a career, a critic necessarily seeks different ways of looking at things to keep sharp, variably entertaining (especially to himself), and non-moribund. The readers vote not only with e-mail evaluations but also by either continuing to read the critic, or not.

I have read Mr. Ebert's movie reviews for decades, and the more decades he continues, the happier I'll be.

Roger, I've been a fan of yours for years... I think I have read every review and essay on your website. I love movies and watch them when I can, but your reviews are a pleasure I look forward to every week.

I have to confess, the reviews that I most enjoy are the sub-2 star reviews. I seek them out hungrily, and usually read them first each week, so I was very excited to read about "Tru Loved", despite having no interest in seeing the film. I don't blame you for walking out, but I feel you deprive your readers of great reading material when you do.

Mr Ebert, reading your reviews is a highlight of my week. To me, they are always dead on, never biased, always eloquent, often funny, and very rarely boring. I'm 31 now and have been reading you since I was teenager. The only other writer who can always make the words come alive, for me anyway, is Stephen King. You are both master storytellers, in different respects. I'm sure you hear this a lot, I just wanted to add my two cents.

Michelle

After reading the posts, I believe that a point has been lost. Your review clearly states, at the opening, that "it (Tru Loved) fails at fundamentals we take for granted when we go to the movies" and "it (the movie) illustrates what the minimum requirements are for a competent film".

In other words -- in your professional opinion, "Tru Loved" did not meet some basic requirements to even be called a "Movie". You are a Movie critic, not a critic of High School Plays That Were Videotaped And Put On DVD.

So, probably what's more germaine to this discussion is -- what is the definition of Movie? A Movie critic should indeed be expected to sit thru an entire Movie; however, I would not expect a Movie critic to feel compelled to sit thru (or review) an effort that was not Movie-worthy.

Found the review informative and laughed out loud at the Q&A at the bottom. And, really love your efforts to use your platform to bring more attention to indies. Had noticed and appreciated that on your TV show too. (Which is why it's unlikely I'll ever watch that new incarnation of your show.)

I think you can review a movie you've only seen 8 minutes of, at least, you can review those 8 minutes, but since you criticize the dialogue, framing, etc., and have no idea if that tone is consistent throughout the movie, you should have stated at the START of the review that you only watched 8 minutes of the film.

You really have no idea if the rest of the movie is as off as the first 8 minutes was, so it's somewhat dishonest to your reader, who imagines that the whole movie contains bad line readings, etc., when actually, all we know for sure is that the first 8 minutes has them.

In order to avoid making your reader feel tricked at the end of your review, I think the disclaimer should appear at the head, not the foot.

I think you can review a movie you've only seen 8 minutes of, at least, you can review those 8 minutes, but since you criticize the dialogue, framing, etc., and have no idea if that tone is consistent throughout the movie, you should have stated at the START of the review that you only watched 8 minutes of the film.

You really have no idea if the rest of the movie is as off as the first 8 minutes was, so it's somewhat dishonest to your reader, who imagines that the whole movie contains bad line readings, etc., when actually, all we know for sure is that the first 8 minutes has them.

In order to avoid making your reader feel tricked at the end of your review, I think the disclaimer should appear at the head, not the foot.

Walking out on a bad movie should be standard practice for you as a reviewer. The quality of movies is so low, I think you should be walking out on more than half of them. That should be the first level of critique: is the movie worth one's time at all? If you feel it's a waste of your time, don't endure it for any reason. Walk away, and inform us that the movie failed to earn your viewing time.

First of all, as a critic, isn't that almost like a judging a book by its cover?

The movies could have become a much better movie after the 8 minute mark. How do you know that it will be utterly terrible and incompetently made?

Take this all with a grain of salt (and I do love your reviews and knowledge of film), but the child in kindergarten is right. At the end of the day, you get watch movies. How cool is that? Would it be too much to ask to have the film critics whose job is to view and review films to review films that they have seen in it's entirety?

Now maybe Joe the Plumber (given that he is not a professional film critic) can walk out of each and every film if he pleases. It's not his job to view the entire film. But for you it is. Also, even though, you do have a proven track record, how are we to believe that you will not do more of this lacksadaisal viewing in the future?

Roger,
After reading all these marvelous Posts as well as your review of "Tru Loved" and the revelation of your early departure from the film, I think the one point overlooked by everyone including yourself is...

Ebert: Is...what? Overlooked by you, too?

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this above, but it seems that if you are going to do this (write a review of 8.5 minutes of a film), there should be no star rating. I agree with you that star ratings should not be seen as shorthand for a review, and may in fact diminish the review itself. But they can serve a function as a kind of rounding-out statement. I know you reserve the 0-star rating for the absolute worst of the worst, but I think "N/A" might have worked and not tipped your hand too much.

The fact is, although your guess is better than most people's, you do not know what the rest of the film is like. Others have stated here that many films begin poorly. (And I have to believe you've reviewed an entire film with an opening 8 minutes worse than these.) I recall several of your one- or two-star reviews where you single out one superb, transcendent scene. Sometimes these scenes come late.

Sorry to sound like a killjoy - I enjoyed the review immensely. It put me in mind of the Pitchfork review of a Jet album. The review consisted entirely of a video clip of a monkey urinating in its mouth. Did that reviewer listen to the whole album? I don't really care.

Roger, your review of "Tru Loved" conjured up in my mind thoughts of a sunny classroom, with you as the lecturer giving us the fundamentals of filmmaking. Maudlin thoughts? Not necessarily. I see you moderately striking your desk with a ruler, admonishing us to be serious. I pay attention to what is being taught.

Closing note: It would be nice if someone who is not closeted were to present his/her view of the film (providing that said person sat through the film).

Roger, Anna et al, wishing you all a happy weekend.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

To James Hawk III: As per Roger's review, the major problems of the film seem to be technical ones. It's heart, however, is in the right place. If we were to throw in the relevance that the film has in today's society, then there is this chance of it achieving cult status in the G & L community. I'm guessing here. Personally, I cannot relegate the film to the landfill as I haven't seen it yet.

Now why do I see, in my mind's eye, Anna's disapproving grimace, with arms akimbo, at the mere mention of the word "landfill"? Anna, was I thinking too much, or do we both share the same Poirotian proclivity for deduction. (^_^) Did you see the message I left for you in the debates?

I have no problems at all with Mr. Ebert's actions, nor with his handling of the review. He sits through a lot of bad movies that we as regular viewers *do* walk out on. He sits there and takes it, all the time. If one film finally drives him out of the theater at the 8 minute mark, he has a darned good reason for leaving.

I would also argue that his instincts about whether the film is going to get better are more honed than most viewers' instincts are. By way of analogy, I grade papers at the college level. It's what I do for a living, pretty much. And while I usually (with about the same frequency as Mr. Ebert) make it all the way through a paper, I know what sort of problems the author has right at the top. I pick up a paper, read the first couple of lines, and see a hundred things that the author's fellow students (who peer-reviewed the thing) did not see. I know what I'm in for very early, with such certainty that if I could pick stocks with that sort of predictive accuracy I'd be a very rich man.

I'm not talking about pinpoint accuracy, here. But I know the paper's potential range. I read to the end to figure out whether the "good" paper is a B+, A-, or A, but I know it's in that neighborhood early. I read to the end to figure out whether a "weak" paper is an D+, C-, or C -- to determine whether it passes. But when I pick up a paper for which the predicted range is F or, at the highest, D-, it's not going to turn around and become a B when I'm done. It just doesn't work that way, and I'm pretty sure it's the same sort of deal when critics like Mr. Ebert review films. In this case, he saw a film with a low range score of 25% and a high range of say 50%. So he walked out. I would, too.

I have no problems at all with Mr. Ebert's actions, nor with his handling of the review. He sits through a lot of bad movies that we as regular viewers *do* walk out on. He sits there and takes it, all the time. If one film finally drives him out of the theater at the 8 minute mark, he has a darned good reason for leaving.

I would also argue that his instincts about whether the film is going to get better are more honed than most viewers' instincts are. By way of analogy, I grade papers at the college level. It's what I do for a living, pretty much. And while I usually (with about the same frequency as Mr. Ebert) make it all the way through a paper, I know what sort of problems the author has right at the top. I pick up a paper, read the first couple of lines, and see a hundred things that the author's fellow students (who peer-reviewed the thing) did not see. I know what I'm in for very early, with such certainty that if I could pick stocks with that sort of predictive accuracy I'd be a very rich man.

I'm not talking about pinpoint accuracy, here. But I know the paper's potential range. I read to the end to figure out whether the "good" paper is a B+, A-, or A, but I know it's in that neighborhood early. I read to the end to figure out whether a "weak" paper is an D+, C-, or C -- to determine whether it passes. But when I pick up a paper for which the predicted range is F or, at the highest, D-, it's not going to turn around and become a B when I'm done. It just doesn't work that way, and I'm pretty sure it's the same sort of deal when critics like Mr. Ebert review films. In this case, he saw a film with a low range score of 25% and a high range of say 50%. So he walked out. I would, too.

Roger, I thought it was a lovely review. One of the best reads I've had in a long time. You examine exactly what a movie needs to have at least a basic competence, and use "Tru Love" as a great example, even to comic effect. And when I reached the end of the review, I literally laughed out loud.

I have no qualm with someone walking out of a film if it just totally fails, for whatever reason--deceny or competence. Well done!

Roger, I owe you some overdue thanks on the subject of walking out of movies.

Nowadays I find myself walking out of three or four movies a year. Why so many? Because of poor focus or bad sound.

Thanks for advocating that we collectively hold our local multiplexes to a higher standard. I get a lot of wry looks from wormy young ushers, but I also get my money back.

A comment above mentioned the processing of college applications and the temptation to skip parts of them. The analogy made was something on the order of the first eight minutes of a film being like a first little section of an application.

I don't think that analogy holds. Roger's comments as I read them were more like reading an application to go to college on which the handwriting is mostly illegible and where it isn't the grammar is incorrect. In that case, is there really any reason to procede with looking at the application, an application to college? In my mind, clearly not. People with failing fundamentals don't belong in college. There are other schools that are equiped to handle it. Likewise, if I had watched and reviewed as many films as Roger has and had seen what he documented in the first eight minutes, I'd have left, too.

As for concealing the walkout until the end of the review? Very effective writing. Loved it.

I'm not sure why this should be an issue. It wasn't a misleading review; you made it clear exactly what your views were based on. You invited alternative views. What else is there?

In certain ways, it's like the too-many-stars discussion. Why do stars matter at all? It's childish to want to appoint people to make pronouncements of that sort, and, especially, to complain if it doesn't work out -- it's like suing McDonald's if you buy hot coffee from them and burn yourself with it. And it's also a bit like the kind of "Teacher, Johnny said something bad" literalism that has poisoned political discourse here. Such matters seem to be on your mind lately, as witness the Creationism experiment, and it isn't difficult to understand why. You're being put into a false position.

Speaking for myself, I've enjoyed your work immensely over the years, and missed you badly when you were gone, but I've never regarded you as an authority. You've been Roger, who's intelligent, grounded, moral, sensible, and very funny, and who also gets things wrong a lot of the time. (To take a particularly egregious example, no, Seabiscuit was an awful movie, and the book it was based on was good in all the ways the movie wasn't.) You've never pretended to be anything else than someone who likes movies when he can and engages himself with them in an interesting way. That's all anyone could ever ask of a critic, and in your case, believe me, it's plenty.

As far as "right & wrong", that's up to you and your editor to decide. Here's what grabbed me about the original review and your posting.

As part of my job, I am expected to watch up to a half-dozen non-mainstream (aka low-budget) films as DVD screeners each month. As a result of these viewings, I turn over comments, impressions and a numeric grading scale to determine if these DVD's are recommended to our customer base as good titles for their DVD rental libraries.

I don't watch every minute of these films. You can tell in about eight to ten miuntes (tops) if the project has any competency behind it, any acceptable production values, or if the performances or script have merit. The one caveat I get from the program administrator is to scan ahead, before total abandonment, to see if things change at all. In a year of being involved in this program, no one DVD has saved itself after that first jump ahead.

In one respect, I'm amazed to find my process follows that of an internationally respected cinephile such as Mr. Ebert. I, too, hit IMDB before my viewing, to get a sense of the plot. I will often find the original title of my assigned DVD, and get to see original poster art far preferrable to the mock-up of the DVD sleeve I'm given.

The upside of this process is I get to see suprisingly nice films I'd have otherwise missed - "Noise", "Finding Amanda", "Pittsburgh", & "I Want Candy". But the ones that only get eight to ten minutes sounds just like what Mr. Ebert experienced with "Tru Loved". Eight to ten minutes of my life wasted that I'll never get back.

And here's my final litmus test. Is the time spent on the screener better or worse that watching the same ten minutes of "Two and a Half Men"?

Brrr. Gave myself a chill there.

I think that even in the worst "halloween 5" "disaster movie" etc. films there is a threshold of competence as far as acting and cinematagrophy goes. You criticize the banality of the writing and how generic the plot is and all that stuff.

Half of your criticisms in the review were about hamhanded staging and acting, it almost sounds like a student film from the review

You said it: your editor has saved your ass for 20 years.

She was right.

You were wrong.

You should quit because you have lost your good judgment and have apparently stopped listening to those around you.

Eight minutes?
Restaurant review: I stopped after being seated at the table.
Book review: I stopped after reading 27 pages.
Wine review: I stopped after reading the label.
Music review: I stopped after 30 seconds.

See how lame it is?

Time for you to sign off.

I don't know about anyone else, but I only like to read reviews of movies that you don't like, as I always find them extremely educational. I'm an aspiring filmmaker, and find that it's much easier to learn from what a bad movie did wrong than to try to duplicate what a good movie did right. I've sat here for hours just reading the 1-star and 2-star reviews in the archives, and only read positive reviews for movies that I'm really really interested in watching. (For example, I was interested in seeing "W", and am now even more interested in seeing it after reading the review.)

And so I completely approve of the review for this movie. The fact that you were able to find so much flawed filmmaking in the first eight minutes just makes it all the more damning. Rather than consider it a sham that you didn't watch the whole movie, I totally want to know if a film makes someone want to flee. Because I'm someone who lacks the ability to get up and walk out of a film, I'd like to know beforehand that a film is like that. And while I often don't agree with positive reviews you give (I think your sap threshhold is far higher than mine), I rarely disagree with the negative reviews. And again, this sort of review just helps people see what not to do in a movie. And if it prevents just one indie film with sloppy filmmaking from being made, it did its job. Kudos.

One of the new trends in film promotion is to show the first 10 minutes of it online as a teaser.

I think the studio should do that for this film. Then a lot more people can see what you are talking about and possibly save their money. :)

"I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation."

Someone earlier brought up Keyser Soze, which reminded me of your (not favorable) review of "The Usual Suspects", from which the quote above was lifted.

Your perspective was that the "blinding revelation" at the film's end was a device (read: trick) that potentially meant little meaningful. Or something.

I disagreed with that review. I liked the film. I think you did something similar with your "Tru Loved" review.

And I liked that too.

There's a place in this world for manipulation by good puppeteers, literary or otherwise. Just ask Don Corleone.

Life's too short! Crap is Crap! Thanks for the warning.

I read your review, then I read your blog entry, then I read the reader comments. I think you said it all when you stated "You pay me to write exactly the review I choose to write, about every movie." And I pose this question to every person on here who has found "fault" with Roger's review of Tru Loved: Why would you want it any other way? I would rather see Roger maintain integrity to his own way of writing and give me the review as he wants it than to read some distilled, protocol-following "review". Since when does a critic HAVE to watch an entire movie? If a food critic feels like upchucking after the first bite of his meal, must he finish it to write a qualified review? More the point, isn't the fact that he couldn't finish it stronger testimony the food was terrible? To be quite honest, I was refreshed by Eberts honesty and manner in which he wrote this review. It even had a surprise ending! For all those who think Roger's review wasn't up to par, I'd like all of you to watch the entire film and then write your own review. I'm pretty darn sure that no one will write a more interesting or informative review than Roger's. For the record, Ebert could have chose not to write a review at all, but I think he did his readers a service by writing it. He gave us "more for our money". He stimulated our thinking. He informed us of significant filmmaking principles. He communicated to us how he thinks and feels as a movie critic. If these things are unimportant or insignificant to you, why bother reading Roger's writings? There are more than plenty of other critics to choose from who will write a review to your specifications. If they are important to you, however, than what in the world are you complaining about?

I have to ask, Mr. Ebert - don't you at least plan to correct your review regarding Mr. Vilanch playing dual roles, now that you know that NOT to be the case? Surely you can't blame the filmmakers for your own mistake?

I do think it's acceptable to turn off or walk out on a movie--provided, of course, you have a good reason. I walked out on "American Psycho" (it's really not a comfortable movie to see with your mother, no matter how much she likes movies) and turned off "Last House on the Left" (which is an early example of torture porn and no less contemptible than its modern incarnations). There are people who perhaps would not agree with my decisions in each case but they are not me so perhaps they cannot fully understand why I made them. The same goes with you, Roger. And I don't expect you'll make a habit of reviewing movies after having only seen eight minutes of them. So in this case, I think you were correct.

The cluelessness of readers of Roger's reviews gleaning the impression that he is "anti-gay" because of his references to a gay character in his review is pretty much as dopey as those who would believe that Roger is a proud supporter of Palin ahd her campaign after reading his tiresome, boring, and predictable Palin cheap shot that he found himself chomping at the bit to throw into the same review.

Thank goodness you made it explicitly clear that you are NOT homophobic to the three or four knuckle-dragging neanderthals who read your review and initially thought you were anti-gay.

Just say "YES" to base reading comprehension skills. And no, that doesn't mean finishing the second half of your XBox 360 owners manual.

:-\

I'd forgotten-- Bruce Vilanch used to write for the SUN-TIMES, didn't he? Was he as amusing then?

Ebert: He worked for the Tribune daily paper called both Chicago's American and Chicago Today. He was ALWAYS funny.

Ebert to readers: Congratulations! I've said how impressed I've been by the high quality of the comments on my blog, and now here is proof. John Brandon of Computerworld, naming this blog #2 on a list of the 10 best-written blogs on the web, has this to say about you: "Equally entertaining are the comments from readers, which are about the best you will see on a blog." Here is the link:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116838&&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

Well Sir, that is quite the pickle. On the one hand, as an official movie critic you probably owe it to your profession to sit through the entire thing and evaluate the whole piece. On the other hand, you have never been one of those fuddy-duddy critics who looks at movies as only artistic expressions of man's inner blah-blah-blah. you are the man on the street that we want to to say 'That movie is crap, I walked out after 8 minutes'. So I suppose you are banned now from the ultra-elitist movie critics parlor and welcomed into the man on the street's bar with the rest of us. More educated and worldly in your phrasing, gooder with words, and not afraid to say 'that movie blows'. Kudos!

Sorry Roger, but I can't get on board with this.

It's a great gimmick, and it probably got a lot of people to read a review when they otherwise would never know it exists. Because you fully disclosed that you walked out eight minutes in, your credibility doesn't even come into question, and anyone who jumps to the conclusion that (a) you do this often, (b) other critics do this often or (c) this will encourage respectable critics to start doing so is thinking foolishly. Some younger readers might get some rotten ideas, but every kid writes a book report about a book he or she didn't read, so this is nothing new to anyone.

So no harm done... except to the people who worked on this film. Were I one of them, and I knew that the country's most prominent film critic slapped on my work a damning one-star rating that, while explained in the review, will never go fully explained to the who knows how many people who simply glance at your page or skim through rotten tomatoes or metacritic, I'd feel awfully sore. Disclosure or not, you know full well that a lot of people look at the score and don't waste time on the actual review, especially when that score is a single star. In that sense, you presented a distorted product, which deludes those admittedly lazier readers and, in turn, unfairly punishes a lot of people who worked hard, regardless of ability, to make this movie.

I don't care how lousy those eight minutes or the whole production are. Those people deserve better. Turn their film into a laughingstock, and perhaps the answer to a trivia question, isn't fair at all.

(Full disclosure of my own: I review movies for McClatchy-Tribune.)

Congrats! What some people are failing to understand is that if they are still curious about the movie they can look elsewhere for reviews as well. But your review says a lot. It says that, its not just a subtle bad that you sit around and wait till it gets better, it clearly shows its incompetently made.

I can think of 2 times I've stopped watching a movie and had no intent to return to it. Never has it been in a Theater. Oshoka (watched a while of it, but it was just not my taste and I was getting no enjoyment.), Royal Tenenbaums (is it okay to stop watching after 30 minutes of no laughter, despite having enjoyed some of Wes's other work?), and another movie I can't recall.

Thanks for saving me my time and money. And thanks for a review that says exactly why you didn't like it. It reminds me of what goes through my head with movies I don't like.

p.s. I'm waiting for the inevitable amusing, yet lacking honest self reflection, 'blast' by the director or producer.

Dave says: "It's a shame that you left the movie early. It is revealed at the 9 minute mark that the proceeding footage is the work of a character who is an unsuccessful aspiring film maker. It's an intentionally terrible film-within-a-film. At the ten minute mark you realize that the debacle that you just witnessed is the set-up for a wonderfully scripted, acted, and directed movie. Wouldn't you feel like an ass if this were true? Since you have literally no idea if this is true (or if there is some other twist that you are unaware of), haven't you betrayed your duty as a film reviewer?"

--

Roger seems fully capable of recognizing and appreciating irony. But if the movie did that, then I'd surely walk out. If a comic got on stage and told 10 minutes of bad jokes and then said 'HAH! the joke was that I was telling bad jokes,' I'd walk out. Don't waste my time with that form of 'irony.'

I think one of the key aspects of your experience which needs to be examined is that it was a DVD screener and not seeing it in a proper theater. I think this makes your choice of no longer watching it far less of a statement. I think that watching a film on DVD, no matter the set up, is a similar experience to watching a television show. If you are watching a new television show you tend to watch the first act before the commercial break, which fittingly comes close to eight minutes in, and decide whether this is a show you have any interest in. This is nothing but a statement of taste and not a personal statement. I think television as it is now is like the salad bar at the sizzler, you don't feel like you've insulted the chef if you don't finish your clam chowder. Now walking out of a movie in a theater is another matter altogether. Going to see a movie in a theater is more like seeing a stage performance. Going to a cinema is an event, you must actually do something beyond pressing play. This makes walking out of a movie like walking out of a play, you are making a clear statement against the maker of the work. This is in no way saying that you owed this film a theater screening. My point is that since the environment that a film is viewed in is the 6th man, it likewise affects what no longer watching says about the viewer.

I walked out on the movie "The Missing" starring tommy lee jones at about 3 minutes...but I didn't pay to see it, my sister was working at the theater and I got to watch movies for free. I went over and saw "Love, Actually" instead.

Roger didn't walk out as his emotions told him to, like a lot of us, or I myself, would probably do. It's all right there, one reason after another, some of those reasons preclude the viewer (...yes, it is subjective; beauty is in the eye...) from watching the rest of the film by lacking some very fundamental qualities, which affects the rest of the film as a whole. If you find out that all that he saw was intentional, that probably would have made him add another number on the list saying if you are going to do something in a film, do it. If you are going to try to be a funny film, don't erase all that happened and say, oh it was just a dream sequence.

He also already read the story of the movie, and nowhere in there did it say it was arty in that her quest seems almost to be complicated by sexual politics, etc...not it says she does get "Recently relocated from San Francisco to conservative suburbia by her lesbian mothers, Tru struggles like all teens to fit in and find love, but her quest is complicated by sexual politics, closed minds, and closeted friends as she seeks to establish her school's first Gay-Straight Alliance."...which precludes it from being an arty film in the sense that these things almost happen, but don't and intrigue you...no, things were happening all right and not in an intriguing way and not with an interesting story.

My two cents:

You are entitled to walk out of a crappy movie. But instead of calling the review a 'review' you should have put it under commentary and left off the star rating altogether. I respect you tremendously but I side with your editor.

I have never walked out of a movie I paid to see. I have walked out of the room while watching video at home (Pulp Fiction), and tried to pay attention to films you highly recommended but just flat out didn't like (Surrender Dorothy, Jesus' Son).

Peace in. Peace out.

Well, certainly a lot of naysayers here, too, along with positive comments.

But I agree with the leaving early of a lousy movie. I rented Dumb and Dumber and watched about 15 minutes before I could stand no more. I almost walked out of Indy IV in about 5 different places, as it totally insulted the viewer's intelligence. And I wish more reviewers would walk out on lousy movies so I could be forewarned about movies such as Hamlet II.

As long as the reviewer says he left a movie early, he is being honest with his readers. That's all we should ask. We will be able to discern which reviewers tend to like the same things we like, and choose which ones to follow closely.

Personally, I think you should create a rule for yourself: to watch at least the first thirty minutes of a movie.

In eight minutes, you probably did view more than enough evidence concerning the quality of the movie, but as a reviewer you should take the time to make up your mind, rather than reacting immediately.

I'm wondering how you could sit through a movie like Chaos, or any number of the movies that you have given zero stars, but you could only suffer 8 minutes of Tru Loved.

It was one of those dull, rainy Sunday afternoons when you find yourself bored and plopped on the sofa; mindlessly flicking channels, hoping something good is on. That's how I first met you and Gene Siskel - I'd stumbled upon you by chance back when I was a teenager, and you were both on PBS. So too, the review responsible for inspiring a lasting love affair with Indie films: namely "My Dinner With Andre".

Yes. I was one those, Roger. One of the people watching that day, albeit up in Canada.

Your combined enthusiasm was infectious, and the ability to passionately articulate WHY people should go see the film, impressive. I admired that skill in you both, very very much. Sadly, it wasn't possible to actually read one your reviews as we didn't get the Chicago Sun-Times where I lived. That would eventually change but before it did and as luck would have it, my local library got a copy of one of your books!

I was 15 years old and exploring the isle where they kept books on Theater and Film, my bags already so full I don't know why I was looking for more, but I stopped when I spotted your name on the spine of a volume placed at eye level. It was an edition of Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook. I grabbed it!

It was heavy and opened on its own to a page without prompting, making where it fell, all the more ironic; your review of a Canadian film called "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing".

While on The Tonight Show together, Gene Siskel playfully teased you once about receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, quipping something to the effect of: "yeah, but it was addressed to occupant." (Chuckle; I still remember that!)

Point is he was wrong to mock you. For after reading the review, I was so taken aback by your skill as a writer, I xeroxed the page so I could bring it with me to school the next day and show it to my English teacher (I couldn't take the actual book as someone had just reserved it.)

Earlier, my teacher and I had gone over a rough draft of my essay. He'd scolded me for bad grammar and noting that I didn't seem to care about what I was writing. I wanted to show him your work so as to illustrate a point I wanted to make by way of rebuttal, which I did:

"It's hard to write a good essay when you don't like what you've been given to write about. Whereas when you DO like the subject, then your words can soar! The way they do in this man's review of a Canadian film. For now you're not trying to haul a pile of bricks up a hill with both hands tied behind your back!"

Note: I'd attended a Private Catholic High School for girls where certain things were verboten to express and I was a young painter, an Artist with dissident-minded sensibilities; not a good mix. And I'd had to tippy-toe around everything I could see in between the lines of a "suitable" book we were supposed to review. Ie: not only was it boring, I couldn't really say what I thought about it for fear I'd get a lower mark.

"I want to learn how to write like Roger Ebert," I'd told him. "I want to be able to quote T.S. Eliot too! But it's hard to reach for that when you don't care, too bored to bother. Can't you let me pick something out for myself? Something from the Public library and not the school's..?

No.

Reason being: where's the challenge in that? You'll already know what you think and how you feel about it, for hand-picking your subject.

"Yes, but just because you like something, doesn't mean you know how to write this well about it..!" I argued, waving your review in his mildly amused face. "And isn't it better to make it easier as opposed to harder, to learn how to write that well..?"

I was reminded then that I was attending a Private Catholic High School paid for by my parents, and while not completely oblivious or insensitive to my particular way of thinking (aka: I know you're an artist) this was the assignment the class was handed and it's one rule for all, regardless.

In other words, suck it up and do it.

Well... you can lead a girl to the Vatican, but you can't make her kneel. I didn't read the rest of the book. I went instead back to my Public library where I looked for and eventually found a review of the author's work (known for being about the challenges of a Canadian frontier existence) and read enough to get the gist of the one I couldn't bring myself to finish. I faked my way through the essay I'd be ordered to write and ended-up getting a B for my efforts.

I never told anyone that until now. And I'm only telling you because I know how it feels to be faced with something really boring or at the very least unexciting, and then have to write about it. And I don't think it makes you lazy to have a found a way to "navigate" around the problem; if anyone accuses you of it, I recommend smacking them with your Pulitzer. Nor do I think it was cheating your readers.

For in sharing why you did it, you found a better way to do it than simply going through the motions of reviewing yet another uninspiring film. I like your creativity, Roger. And your honesty.

And also of what reminded me a little of myself that day, when I refused to waste time on a boring book, when I could fill my mind's eye with much better things! Life is short and the clock always ticking, carpe diem.

I support your decision to stop watching. Sometimes a plot can get off to a slow start, but if the craft of the movie is bad from the onset, it's probably not going to get any better. I also don't see how it was dishonest to wait until the end to reveal that you walked out--I thought it was funny. You still admitted it, after all.

I do think, however, that a "no star rating" would have been more appropriate than a 1-star rating. Also, while I don't support Palin myself, I don't like seeing you inserting political jabs into non-political movie reviews.

Mr. Ebert,
It seems to me that walking out of the review was fine, it also seems to me that writing a review, in which at any point you reveal that you saw only 8 minutes is also fine. In my opinion, the error is in giving a star rating. For good or ill - well only for ill - many people do not read the review, but only look at the star rating. These people will assume it is based on the entire movie. In my opinion the best thing to do would have been to publish the review, but not the star rating.

I once had a professor who said that the first 50 pages of a book (roughly and depending on the length of the book) should be read before making a decision to keep reading or to set it aside. Many books require only a page or two to signal to a reader that it is, or will be, a good or even great piece of writing. I think the same applies to films. Though, of course, the reader or viewer can check out any time, while the reviewer is expected to appraise the entirety. I say 'expected' because we're really talking about the perception here of the critic's role--in general or with regard to this particular review.

Typically, a debate similar to this comes up when a person or group publicly condemns a work of art as immoral, inaccurate, tasteless etc., without ever actually viewing or reading the work. And for a work to be judged for its morality, accuracy, or taste, it must be fully absorbed from start to finish. But here the grounds are not moral, they are aesthetic. For a work of art to entertain or engage, it must earn its audience, even the audience of a critic.

So, it is important to recognize that Roger's review is of the first eight minutes of the film, not of the entire film. (The only catch is that you have to read the entirety of the _review_ to know this. And here Roger, you might be somewhat at fault.) Therefore, the review does not judge the film as a whole, but it does make the point, with astute precision, that those first eight minutes are poor and they alone, in Roger's critical opinion, make the film unwatchable for most audiences. Roger does not say, "I watched the first eight minutes of _Tru Loved_ and the whole movie is a failure." He says, "I watched the first eight minutes of _Tru Loved_ and it was so poorly made I couldn't watch the rest or recommend it to my viewers."

To say that Roger didn't do his job because _Tru Loved_ may have elevated from unwatchable to at least bearable, decent, or even brilliant following those first eight minutes is an argument that misses the point. You could argue that calling a movie unwatchable after appraising the first eight minutes, is in fact damning the entire film--but that is the fault of the film's first eight minutes, not the fault of the reviewer. He didn't even have to watch the film--for a small film, never viewing or reviewing it would have likely passed unnoticed. Instead, he purposefully sought it out and was overwhelmingly disappointed. The film didn't earn its audience, at least this particular audience. And, as with any of Roger's reviews, we can take his advice or choose to ignore it.

I have never walked out of a movie.

But I wonder if I could make that claim were it not for you. I almost always do some kind of research before spending my time or money on a film and, for the last fifteen years or so, that includes reading your review. It's not that I won't see a movie you don't like, (because after reading hundreds of reviews I've come to know where our tastes diverge), it's just that I respect your opinion, and I've found that doing so has significantly reduced the number of films I've seen that I wish I hadn't.

The only movie I remember really wanting to walk out of was David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. (It's probably no accident that this was before I became a regular reader, because after looking up your review I see that, though you found things to admire, you too were "repelled by the material on a visceral level.") I stuck it out, however, and remember thinking that if I didn't, I might still have the right to hate it, but my opinion wouldn't have as much credibility.

Of course movies capable of inspiring an emotion as strong as hatred are important to watch. It's the movies that produce indifference or boredom that are harder to justify. But what makes me feel that you should have watched Tru Loved to the end is that it DID inspire you (though certainly not in the way the filmmaker intended). It seems to me that a movie capable of launching as interesting a discussion as what constitutes "the minimum requirements of a competent film" deserves a complete viewing, and your thoughts on the topic would have had more credibility had you done so.

I don't fault you, however, because you make it clear that the scope of your review is limited to the eight minutes that you actually watched.

In a similar spirit of disclosure I should tell you, that in addition to being a loyal reader, I am also a director. Reading this, I've just come home from a day of color correction on my first feature. It's a low-budget production that took me ten years to write, develop and finance. As it happens, the editor and I worked for several weeks trying to correct what we feel is a slow first act. In the end, I believe I made decisions that helped to correct the problem, but I won't truly know until it is shown to audiences. What I DO know, is that it gets better.

So I can't help but empathize with the filmmaker behind Tru Loved who learns he is fortunate enough to have Roger Ebert review his film... only to find out you left after eight minutes. Then again... as painful as it must have been to read, the review is sure to generate interest in his film that it wouldn't otherwise receive... in the world of independent film, maybe I should be so lucky.

As a long time reader and admirer of your reviews I find myself dismayed and disappointed in your decision to publish a review in this manner. While I do not agree with your editor's assertion that publishing this piece may undermine your reputation as one of our nation's leading film critics, I concur with the statement that it is morally dishonest on your part to present this review in its current format. You state that the review would be anti-climactic and its flow perverted had you disclosed early on only having viewed roughly eight percent of Tru Loved's 100 minute running time. Having been both entertained and startled by your review I must admit I agree. However, by leading your readers “inexorably to your eventual decision” you do both the public and the filmmakers an injustice. You have faith that your readership will complete your review in its entirety, and upon completion learn that its contents apply only to a small fraction of the subject under review; it's a pity the makers of this film cannot hold you to the same standard. After all, couldn't the film's narrative be described as a series of events leading to an inexorable conclusion? You've asked if you put your prose over the rights of the film and it is my belief that indeed sir, you have.

Now that the criticism is out there, audiences will be subject to sway by its findings, and you run the risk that someone may feel they've gleaned the relevant information from your review before discovering that the contents cover a very small number of the assembled scenes. This risk seems quite a reasonable one considering you reached your decision about this film in a similarly aborted fashion.

This should have been relegated to your blog, not published in print and on your official site where you present it as criticism. While critical, what you have instead offered here is commentary; a recording of a series of events leading up to your inevitable decision to walk out on the picture. There's the old saying in politics “if you don't vote, you have no right to complain” and I feel something similar holds true in the realm of criticism. I don't want this comment to devolve into a philosophical debate on what does or does not constitute criticism, but I think we can agree that critics should endeavor to avail themselves of at least a majority of a work's content before they can claim to offer reasoned analysis.

I can think of several works for which patience and a desire to see something through to its conclusion despite a shaky start can prove richly rewarding. Having not seen even so much as eight minutes of this film I cannot comment on its (or their) quality, but I suspect that my opinions on it stand a good chance of falling in line with yours if history is any indication. However, this does not excuse your disregard for the conventions of your profession, and sets a dangerous precedent.

One final complaint before I sheepishly retreat from what I feel is sounding like too negative a comment. I know in the past you have mentioned that you review a film based “not on what it's about, but by how it goes about it.” I recognize that this film may indeed go about it's subject matter poorly, but does the fact that the film was made for obviously a very low budget by a novice filmmaker not earn it a bit more of a chance to find its legs than only remaining for the first eight minutes? It can be argued that things like budget and the experience of the cast and crew should not factor in to one's critiques, but certainly there are bigger and better targets out there more deserving of such harsh criticism than a poorly financed film that from everything I can gather seems to have a positive social message? Perhaps your decision to give the film one star as opposed to none acknowledges the efforts of the filmmakers, however ill-applied, but I feel it would have been better in the end to have simply left the matter well enough alone, or to have classified this as commentary independent of your conventional ratings and reviews.

Your reviews are often so much better than the movies themselves. I was cracking up at the end of this review! I have a strong feeling that your review of eight minutes was a great deal more gratifying, educational, and entertaining than the entire film. Please don't change a word of the review!!......although now I'm curious to see the movie..........This review may be the best thing to happen to the film!!

Your reviews are often so much better than the movies themselves. I was cracking up at the end of this review! I have a strong feeling that your review of eight minutes was a great deal more gratifying, educational, and entertaining than the entire film. Please don't change a word of the review!!......although now I'm curious to see the movie..........This review may be the best thing to happen to the film!!

Any man who has had to sit through such atrocities as "I Spit On Your Grave" and "Frogs for Snakes" has earned the right to decide when (and in what situation) to head for the exit. I remember you once commenting to Gene on "At The Movies"-
"..people say 'you get to watch movies for free!', to which I reply 'I pay with two hours of my life!'"
If a movie is bad, its bad. A critic is paid to impart his/her judgement. It is not for us to second guess. If I want to see "Tru Loved", I will; regardless of what a critic wrote or didn't write. You must vote your conscience!!

I'm sure it's not to be such a delight for you, but I look forward to the review from your next walkout. I got an enormous laugh finding out, at the very end, that all of the incompetence detailed in your review was cited from only the first 8 minutes of the movie. Had readers been given that nugget at the start, your review could have been dismissed on lack of credibility, and could have gotten many... walkouts. Ba dum bum.

You say, often, that the first purpose of a review is to help a viewer decide if they want to see a film. Your review of "Tru Loved" did just that for me.

I'm sure it's not to be such a delight for you, but I look forward to the review from your next walkout. I got an enormous laugh finding out, at the very end, that all of the incompetence detailed in your review was cited from only the first 8 minutes of the movie. Had readers been given that nugget at the start, your review could have been dismissed on lack of credibility, and could have gotten many... walkouts. Ba dum bum.

You say, often, that the first purpose of a review is to help a viewer decide if they want to see a film. Your review of "Tru Loved" did just that for me.

The first thing that came to mind was that I'm here every week, wanting to know what you and your fans think. So when you present me with this, the issue is trust. "You're on your own" is a much better endorsement than anything you wrote about the horror film 'Chaos', for example. I think your judgement is solid on this, because it left me curious, not repelled.

Roger,

I believe the phrase you like to use to guide your reviewing is that "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it." I believe your review of Tru Loved speaks to that perfectly. I gathered that you had nothing against the subject matter, despite the wording of the anti-gay comment (already discussed above), but that there is a point where technical flaws break that subject matter irreparably. I read as many reviews of yours as possible, and appreciate the term used above that you're the "bomb-sniffing robot" of the movies for all of us. That does not mean though that they let the robot get blown up every time, so I think you're justified in leaving a film if you want to. I'd be curious if you're re-evaluating your "walk-out threshold" because of the comments in this blog, or if your threshold remains the same in the face of the posters...

The honest thing to do would have made it a starless review. Zero stars because you didn't sit through it. That feels like it is consistent with your star rating policy. You can't give a star to a move of which you have seen less than 9%.

Stars are really beside the point. I'm disappointed by what you did professionally. I feel no sympathy for a person who makes a bad movie, nor I feel sympathy for the critic that has to sit through it. Many critics take it as a mark of pride that they sat through Freddy Got Fingered, North, or Chaos so that we don't have too (thank you, by the way). While each of those films are repugnant in their own way they have some for lack of a better word skill behind them. The point that you have more respect for someone that makes a movie with skill movie over someone that makes a repugnant one is well taken. You made it almost perfectly in your Great Movies entries on Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation. Those reviews lead me to believe that you could have made your point more clearly in more creative way.

Editor is wrong. You were right. Would that I had left at my first sea-sick moment of the tedious Whatshername at the Wedding. Great acting but a miserable whole.

I suspect I'm in the minority, as someone who read the initial review without many objections, but who, during the course of reading the blog, changed his mind.

Actually, my primary issue is the same as Dave's: by walking out, you deny the film the opportunity to make the case for the material you did see as a valid rhetorical inclusion.

As an example, Roger, take the film "Juno," which you adored. A few other critics objected strongly to the cleverness of the dialogue, arguing it was too "cute." While I initially had enjoyed most of the film, I also had a problem with the dialogue, particularly in the first quarter of the film. The snag is that the "cute" language progressively dies down. The effect is gestation on multiple levels: as Juno gets nearer her delivery date, she turns from irony toward earnestness as the dominant mode of expression; the tone of the film shifts, and so does the way characters interact (particularly the language they use).

This is what, for me, justifies the first act, which initially seemed to ring false: that falseness contrasts with the honesty of the film's final act.

These aren't unprecedented structural moves, either. As a second example: the end of Charlie Kaufman's brilliant "Adaptation," (another picture you loved) is a movie that has changed in ways we probably cannot anticipate by watching the first 8 minutes alone — and in ways that transform the way we see the first 8 minutes — but in ways that are entirely consistent with the overall rhetorical goal of the film.

One of my favorite composers (and I think one of America's greatest), Charles Ives, structured a number of his pieces in "cumulative form," a technique that is something like a "theme and variations," in reverse. The music begins with melodies that are fractured and varied to the point of unrecognizability and move progressively toward a full statement of the source material. Often, in Ives, we cannot see the full picture until we arrived at the end.

I have not seen "Tru Loved," but I value your judgment. Other reviews do not suggest that there are any game-changing moments in the film. It isn't fair to reject the possibility that the filmmakers might be right without looking at the whole picture, even if it seems like there might be something better to do with your life.

It is, in any case, the life you signed up for.

You are fully within your right to walk out of a movie if it prompts you to do so, as long as you tell us that you do (and why you did it). I admit that I was surprised when I reached the end of the review, but I think it's hard for people to really realize the life of a film critic. Not to smother you in flattery (ok, maybe a little bit) but I know that film critics see so much that you can probably tell all you need to know from 8 minutes of any predictable or genre film.

That being said, the one thing that bothered me was the fact that you gave it a one star rating and yet still walked out. I know, a zero is usually reserved for the ugly and morally reprehensible, but I've read a good deal of your reviews, and I don't recall you ever walking out of a movie and giving it more than zero stars. And you've sat through many zero star movies that, from the sounds of it, were much worse than this. You endured all 87 mind-numbing minutes of North, yet you could only see 8 minutes of this? And this still rates higher? I know the star system is relative, but I am led to believe this movie was more than just amateurish if it made you leave.

Overall, though, I agree with most of these posts: your credibility is not threatened, we're making a mountain out of a molehill, and life will (and should) go on. Keep up the good work!

It seems to me like you deliberately walked out at that exact time so you could use the "not quite 8 1/2" headline.

Roger,
I feel that you should see the entire movie, and then re-review it in its entirety. If your evaluation is as poor for the whole movie as it was for its first 8.5 minutes, it would be a better service to your readership than your stand-alone review of only 8.5 minutes. And if your re-review of the whole were better than your prior experience, that too would better serve (and even entertain) your readers.

Hoping you will give it another go!

hey man I once watched 55 minutes of white snow at Anthology Film Archives, walking out on the last five minutes. it was memorable, i can tell you that

the real problem with your take is -- maybe you're missing something, not just the rest of the movie, but a new way of making a movie. Something avant-garde, something different -- you know, the kind of thing that critics typically hate but then becomes enshrined in history.

Gee, maybe you lost it.

I thought The Savages was bad when the guy started writing on the wall with the shit, but by the end of the movie I had decided it was fantastic

But then I though The Departed was idiotic with everybody getting shot at the end, and for Nicholson's stupid scenery-eating performance that he does every time. And that No Country for Old Men was idiotic for letting the bad guy get away.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you state in your review for "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" that you walked out before the film was over?

I can say I never heard of "Tru Loved" until this brouhaha. I went and watched the trailer because of it.

It looks horrible. In the same way that "Facing The Giants" looked horrible. Interestingly enough, both films have an agenda, which plays a part in how some folks