| EBERT ERRORS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Be warned: This page may contain spoilers. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. As I am not taking notes while watching these movies, it's entirely possible that *I* could be wrong (though I don't think so). E-mail me if you think I am! I have also begun including errors cited by other individuals on the web. When I do this, I will include the source info. |
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| EBERT'S 3rd DEGREE ERRORS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FILM TITLE | WHAT EBERT SAID | WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) | "My other problem is with a character who, in order to be who he is and what he is, would have to have known that Bishop would end up at Precinct 13, even though Bishop clearly ends up there by accident.There's no way for that particular character to have prior knowledge of where Bishop would be, and no way for him to communicate plans that are essential to the outcome?" | Or the villains of the flick would have had to have been responsible for the radio call that rerouted the bus to where it ended it up�. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) | "It's New Year's Eve, a Dark and Stormy Night, the highway is blocked by an accident, the officers on the bus decide to dump the prisoners at Precinct 13," | Actually, they receive orders over their radio to reroute to this precinct. A minor point, it may seem, but ultimately critical given that the directions to reroute very likely came from the criminals themselves. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Donnie Darko (2001) *!SPOILER ALERT!* | �What logical analysis would explain the presence of 6-foot-tall rabbit with what looks like the head of a science-fiction insect?�� and is set in a world that cannot account for prescient rabbits named Frank�What kind of closure could there be? Frank takes off the insect head and reveals Drew Barrymore, who in a classroom flashback, explains the plot and brings in Grandma Death as a resource person?� | Frank is the boyfriend of Donnie Darko�s older sister. He is dressed in a rabbit suit for Halloween, and has a gunshot wound because Donnie shoots him after Frank accidentally hits Donnie�s girlfriend with a car. (Whether or not this conclusion is 'logical,' per sey, is debatable. However, who the bunny is and at least some of the reasons why he's visiting the main character are quite evident by the end of the film. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First Daughter (2004) | "So she stages a revolt that is painfully awkward in its conception and execution, pretending to be a bad girl, so the president will hear her cry for help... She gets a scolding, and then she gets a severe scolding when Mia talks her into attending another party dressed, so help me, like a go-go dancer in the days when the words "go-go" were being used. (High white lace-up boots, denim miniskirt, pink fur pimp hat, the works.) | She is dressed up as Pamela Anderson with her roommate dressed as Kid Rock, *not* a �go-go� dancer, and though Ebert may have come by this particular error honestly, his assertion that this behavior came out of a rebellion to get her father to back off with security is also incorrect. In fact, she is actually acting out of hurt and an effort to upset her love interest by whom she feels hurt.
| NEW! | Four Brothers (2005) *!SPOILER ALERT!* "I won't describe the rest of the plot, which unfolds like a police procedural, but I will note a nice touch involving the way Jeremiah looks guilty for a moment simply because he is successful and generous." | There's nothing 'simple' here. Yes, he looks guilty due to his generosity �. And because he�s hidden the fact that he is broke, has hidden the fact that he got mixed up with some really bad guys, and then is seen paying one of them off�.
| The Grudge (2004) | "The house shelters, at various times, the mother of one of the characters, who spends most of her time in bed or staring vacantly into space; a young couple who move in, and an estate agent who sees that the bathtub is filled up, sticks his hand into the water to pull the plug and is attacked by a woman with long hair who leaps out of the water. ..Various cops and social workers enter the house, some never to emerge, but the news of its malevolence doesn't get around. You'd think that after a house has been associated with gruesome calamities on a daily basis, the neighbors could at least post an old-timer outside to opine that some mighty strange things have been a-happening in there.�� | The house shelters two different families at two different times. The couple that move in at the beginning of the movie move in WITH their mother, and are all killed over the course of two days.The house is not associated with �gruesome calamities on a daily basis.� The house is associated with an original �gruesome calamity� that did not appear to be supernaturally connected. It is followed by the deaths of several people over the course of two days more than three years later. Additionally, the police involved *do* make note that the family involved in the current events is the first family to live since the first murderous incident. |
NEW! | Hustle & Flow (2005) *!SPOILER ALERT!* "He has a childhood friend named Skinny Black (Ludacris), who has become a millionaire rap star. How close of a childhood friend is a good question; as nearly as I can tell, they went to different schools together.� | There should be no question here. At the end of the film, the main character answers the question in an eloquent and important way, and ultimately, no, he never knew �Skinny Black.� |
The Island (2005) | " Were government funds involved? We don't need to know the answers to these questions, it's true, but they would have allowed Bay ("Armageddon") to do what the best science fiction does, and use the future as a way to critique the present.� | We do know the answer to that question. It was spelled out in detail during a conversation between the man in charge of the secret facility and the man in charge of the private force he was hiring to cover-up his �error.� The government had been involved to the tune of about 150billion, and the private force was needed rather than a gov�t force so that the man in charge could cover-up the mishaps and not risk losing the gov�t�s financial backing. |
The Island (2005) | " Buscemi is an engineer, or maybe a janitor, and lives in what must be the boiler room.� | He doesn�t live there, though he does have sort of a �break room� set up. The characters are shown at his off-site home later in the film. |
NEW! | King Arthur (2004) "The plot involves Rome's desire to defend its English colony against the invading Saxons, and its decision to back the local Woads in their long struggle against the barbarians.� | �Wrong again, Roger. Rome was withdrawing from Britain at this time, not defending it. Nor did Rome decide to back the Woads. Rome retreated from the island altogether, leaving the Woads to face the Saxons alone. Arthur, slated to return to Rome, decided to remain, and organize a resistance to fight the Saxon horde.
This sequence is the key to the entire movie; for Ebert to misread it this badly tells me he either didn't watch the movie, or was more concerned with getting the right amount of butter on his popcorn rather than actually listening to the dialogue.�
R Hailey @ http://shotsacrossthebow.com/archives/002044.html |
The Longest Yard (2005) | "I recall that for some reason the big game is broadcast live on a sports network, maybe because the Sandler character was once a football hero and went down in flames over the drunk-driving scandal,� | His career went down in flames because he was convicted of racketeering due to a thrown football game. This point plays a critical role in his motivations for doing what he does at the end of the film. The drunk-driving incident came well after and simply lead to the violation of his probation that landed him in prison. |
Manchurian Candidate (2004) | *!SPOILER ALERT!* �Every time I watch the original "Manchurian Candidate," I'm teased by the possibility that there may be another, deeper, level of conspiracy, one we're intended to sense without quite understanding. It involves the character of the woman named Rose or Rosie, who Marco meets on a train; she was played in 1962 by Janet Leigh and this time by Kimberly Elise. These characters materialize out of nowhere, fall instantly in love with Marco, and say inexplicable things. To accept them as simply a romantic opportunity is too easy; why would a woman fall for a complete stranger who (in the Sinatra version) is shaking so badly he can't light his cigarette and (in the Washington version) biting vice presidential candidates? She's up to something.� | Ya think? Rose, at least in the second film, is revealed very clearly by the end of the film to be an undercover agent pretending romantic interest in the main character in order to find out more information about what he may know regarding the accusations he has made. |
Raising Helen (2004) | "Their sister Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and her husband are killed in an accident, and in her will, Lindsay leaves custody of her small son and daughter, not to Jenny the perfect homemaker, but to Helen the fast-track girl. How can this be? Helen and Jenny are both appalled, but Helen takes on the task of raising little Henry and Sarah, played by real-life siblings Spencer and Abigail Breslin.� | There are *three* children: Kindergartener, Sarah, pre-adolescent, Henry, and their teen-aged sister, Audrey, and it is, in fact, Audrey's behavior that plays the most significant role in some of Helen's major decisions towards the end of the film |
Resident Evil (2004) | "In a scene where several characters are fighting zombies inside a church, the renegade cop comes to the rescue by crashing her motorcycle through a stained-glass window and landing in the middle of the fight. This inspires the question: How did she know what was on the other side of the window? Was she was crashing through the stained glass on spec? � | Most people who have seen the trailers for the second film know that it is Alice and not the �renegade cop� who crashes through the church window which goes a long way towards answering Ebert�s question, given that Alice has all kinds of enhanced sensory perceptions and abilities. |
Wicker Park (2004) | "Then there are Alex (Rose Byrne) and Luke (Matthew Lillard). They start dating each other. Luke is Matthew's best friend, but Alex doesn't know that.� | In reality, Alex is very clear that Luke is Matthew�s best friend. In fact, it�s central to her whole scheme.Funny that Ebert says in that same review: Am I a slow study? I think I'm ahead of the curve. The reviewer for the BBC Web site reports that the movie takes place in New York. It is set in Chicago and was filmed in Chicago and Montreal. |
Be sure to keep checking back for new entries! |
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Please check out this page for more trivial errors including misnamed characters, wrong dates and wrong ages: Ebert's 1st degree errors
Copyright � 2005
