Farewell to At The Movies (written by Ben Kenber)

August 14^th, 2010 marked the end of a TV show but of an era that I grew up with alongside The Muppet Show and The Cosby Show among others. After losing both the original hosts and gone through changes that were good and downright appalling, the long running film criticism show At The Movies was cancelled and it is now no more. The way Disney saw it, there was just no way to sustain this kind of format anymore, and it no longer fit into mainstream television the way it used to. In many ways, the show died out a long time before its final demise, but it has left me with so many memories that I can still cherish thanks to YouTube among other websites.

I had been watching this show ever since I was in elementary school, eagerly waiting to see which movies Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert would give thumbs up or thumbs down to. Now keep in mind, I got heavily into these shows because it was really the closest I could get to movies back then. It would be years before I finally got to go out to the local cinemas on a regular basis, and movies I was dying to watch I was forced to wait for until they came out on video (VHS to be exact). Back then, it took forever for films to be available to rent at your local video store (and this was in the day and age before Blockbuster Video). Of course, now with the window between theatrical release and DVD release getting shorter and shorter, I am beginning to wish it would take that long again.

My vast knowledge of movies past and present was thanks to shows like this one, and of all the ones on television, there was no touching the dynamic part time duo of Siskel & Ebert. These guys were among my childhood heroes, and I always imagined myself going to the movies with both of them. It took me a long time to eventually realize that getting these two in the same room together was nothing short of a miracle. You’d think they were the best of friends, but it turned out that they couldn’t stand each other for the longest time. They had even got into a fistfight one time over the needless revelation of the top secret plot twist from Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (and that was an unforgivable offence). But it did eventually grow into a friendship to where if they didn’t agree with one another (and this was quite often the case), they had to acknowledge the validity of each other’s opinions at the end, and that’s even if it was done begrudgingly so.

The strong chemistry between these two Chicago newspaper critics was never something you could easily manufacture. You either had it or you don’t, and these two guys had it in spades. No one else could come close to what they accomplished, and this was made clear when they left one venue or channel for another. Both Gene and Roger had started out on a PBS show called Opening Soon To A Theater Near You which later became known as Sneak Previews. When they left it for national syndication, the lineup eventually settled on Jeffrey Lyons and Michael Medved. These two were chummy more than anything else, and each became quite irritating in their own little ways. Their growing concern at the increasing amount of violence was understandable, but they took it took it to a ridiculous level.

Now keep in mind; this was long before Medved became a crazed political zealot. I’m not knocking him for being conservative because that would really not be entirely fair. But it should be very clear by now than Michael is dealing with a world that doesn’t quite resemble the reality we all experience on a daily basis.

My discovery of Siskel & Ebert came when they were doing At The Movies for Tribune Entertainment. When they ended up leaving that incarnation for a more lucrative syndication deal with Disney, they were replaced by Bill Harris and the pathetic snob that was and still is Rex Reed. Even today, Rex Reed seems to revel more in his ability to eviscerate movies and the actors and directors involved in them to mere smithereens. The difference between how he saw movies to Siskel and Ebert was pretty extraordinary. While they would praise movies like River’s Edge, Rex would hate simply because he didn’t care for the way these kids acted. If Rex didn’t want to hang out with these guys (and those same people would probably have rather died than hang out with him), then the movie sucked. Wow, what an open mind this man has!

Anyway, it’s these few replacements that served to emphasize how rare you get a duo that works so well on television. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were critics I respected very much. This is not to say that I agreed with them on everything they said. It still pains me that they gave thumbs down to movies like Better Off Dead, In The Mouth of Madness, The Man With One Red Shoe, or Roger Moore’s last film as James Bond which was A View To A Kill. I don’t care what anyone says by the way, the last one is one of my favorite Bond movies regardless of how annoying Tanya Roberts was in it!

These guys (Ebert especially) were my inspiration in writing movie reviews, and they both taught us all that the best thing a film critic can do is champion a movie that otherwise might not reach a big audience. So many smaller movies get very little notice in large part due to the lack of studio support, and both Siskel & Ebert worked to make sure that these movies got the boost they so desperately deserved. Movies like My Dinner with Andre and Hoop Dreams or even Do The Right Thing may not have gotten the attention they deserved were it not for the backing of these two esteemed film patrons. Their power among other movie critics was so incredibly influential that they even went out of their way to show Academy Awards which movies should win as opposed to the ones that will win. I’d like to think that their unmistakable influence made movies in general much better than they already were previously.

As I grew up, I continued to watch Siskel & Ebert bicker over movies they thought were great, and of which ones they thought were utter crap. The most memorable moments from the show were when they seriously disagreed with each other over certain movies. One of the big ones was David Lynch’s Blue Velvet which Siskel hailed as a masterpiece while Ebert found it incredibly offensive in the way Lynch treated the actors, especially Isabella Rossellini. But the mother of all their disagreements was probably over Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket which Siskel proclaimed as one of the greatest war movies ever made, but which Ebert felt paled in comparison to other war movies as well as Kubrick’s own works from the past. They complained throughout the entire show regarding it, even through their review of Benji The Hunted. I do have to say that Siskel’s charge over how Ebert could give thumbs up to that one and not Full Metal Jacket was unfair. I mean c’mon! Those were two completely movies that needed to be taken on their own terms. Comparing the two was beyond pointless!

Actually, that’s the other thing I truly liked about Siskel & Ebert; as the years went by, the two of them were able to review movies for what they were instead of what they thought they should have been about. There may have been a time when either of them compared any of the Friday the 13^th movies to Lawrence of Arabia, but that time was probably over as quickly as it started.

Many of my friends from school hated these two because the way they saw it, Siskel & Ebert hated all movies in general. That reasoning never made a lick of sense to me. I mean yes, they hated a lot of movies, but usually for a good reason. But if both of them hated movies every bit as much as people thought they did, why in hell would they spend so much time reviewing them? I can’t remember which show it was exactly when Gene Siskel said it, but he made it clear as to the kind of people he and Roger were:

“We don’t hate the movies! We love movies! We want them to be good!”

Besides, as you get older and have seen as many movies as these two had, your perceptions of them would be no different. Our tastes in the film will eventually evolve whether we like it or not. Evolution is a good thing though, and that’s regardless of what Kirk Cameron has to say about it.

Granted, peer pressure back in my severe period of adolescence almost made me burn up all the Roger Ebert review books I had purchased over the years. But I never did though probably because common sense had to kick in there at some point. My high school buddies may have called Siskel & Ebert the worst critics ever, but that was because they gave thumbs down to movies like Encino Man which itself annoyed me every bit as much. Let’s see what those same people feel about it now anyway! I saw Encino Man right after I watched Alien 3, and it did nothing to cheer up my mood.

When Gene Siskel passed away in 1999, the same year I graduated from college, a part of my childhood died along with him. In many ways, it was the beginning of the end for At The Movies, and I say that even though I applauded Roger Ebert for continuing the show and believed him fully when he said Gene would have wanted it that way. Still, no guest critic or replacement could ever match what Gene brought to the show or the chemistry he had with Roger.

Now I have no desire to knock Richard Roeper who eventually became the permanent co-host of At The Movies. It took a bit for him to grow on me, but he did deserve to be taken on his own terms. Calling him Gene Siskel’s replacement was completely unfair to him, and he brought his own rhythm to the show which eventually made him into a good sparring partner with Ebert.

Still, I think around the time he joined was when I started to lose some appreciation for the show and what it was meant to be about. They ended up reviewing at least five movies a show which ended up seriously cut down the time they had to talk about each one in more detail. It used to be where the critics could discuss a movie fully, but it had now gotten to where the conversations were reduced down to bullet points so they could fit in as many reviews as possible.

What really bugged me though was when they completely condensed the recap of the week’s movies. It used to be where they would give a final critical note before letting the movie pass into the place of history it had made for itself. Take this one for example:

“We both hated Jaws The Revenge and can’t believe this is the same movie Michael Caine stayed on location for instead of picking up his Oscar for Hannah and her Sisters. Two big thumbs down!”

Towards the end, it got to where they were saying that this one deserved thumbs down, that one thumbs up, they split on the other one, and they both liked this one and it opens in wide release the last week of October or something. Everything on the show had become way too fast paced, and it all started to go in one ear and straight out the other. No wonder the ratings decreased towards the end of the show’s run.

We all prayed for Ebert’s speedy recovery when he fell ill from cancer surgery, but time just kept going on and on and it soon became abundantly clear that he was never going to be coming back. It was fun to see what guest critics would end up coming on the show, and having guests like Kevin Smith come on was a big treat. But with Ebert gone, there was no way the show could continue like it had before.

This ended up causing Disney to make changes that almost completely destroyed the show, and I couldn’t blame Ebert or Roeper for walking out on the show when things changed too much. One of the changes resulted in bringing on Ben Lyons, the son of Sneak Previews critic Jeffrey Lyons, and it took no time for any of us to realize what an amazingly bad fit he was for a show like this. Can you think of another critic who would have declared I Am Legend to be one of the greatest movies ever made? How about one who was so excited to see Let The Right One In get an American remake? Moreover, who else could have called the trailer to Twilight one of the three movies to see this week? Does it take more than that to understand why the ratings for the show plummeted so quickly?

Even with the eventual replacement of Ben Lyons and his unlucky partner Ben Mankiewicz with two actual movie critics (A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips), the writing was pretty much on the wall for At The Movies. This show could only go on for so much longer before it was time to call it quits. Roger Ebert was correct in saying upon its cancellation in saying that the demise of the long running show had nothing to do with Ben Lyons or any of the other critics who came on to host. In this day and age with the internet, there is no longer any room for a show like it when you can find film criticism just about anywhere and everywhere you go.

Last I heard though, Roger Ebert is working on an internet based show of At The Movies with some of the same critics, and I would look forward to checking that out. At this point, the world wide web would probably be the best forum for this kind of show. So while the balcony may be closed, it will never be closed permanently (not for me anyway).

The ending of At The Movies is a shame, but not an entirely tragic one. It will eventually take shape again in another venue, and we are still left with many great moments that we can check out at the show’s official website as well as YouTube. For me, my favorite moments came from when Siskel & Ebert continued to sharply criticize the MPAA for not changing the X rating into something more appropriate like an A rating for adults only for movies that were not necessarily dominated by nudity. I still think my favorite review of theirs was when they justifiably eviscerated Jaws The Revenge for the horribly movie that it truly was. And while it may have broken my heart that they gave a highly unfavorable review to Another 48 Hours, I did have to come and see that they were right about it.

So thank you At The Movies for all the memories you left us, and for giving me the kind of appreciation for film that I may have had otherwise. The show may now be history, but its legacy will remain. I know that’s a clichéd way of putting it, so forgive me for not giving it a more thumbs up description. For those of you who hated the show, you may be entitled to your opinion, but you probably watched the show just as much as I did. Just accept it.

One other memory I have of the show was when I was getting off a plane at an airport and saw that Siskel & Ebert gave two thumbs up to Clear and Present Danger with Harrison Ford. I mentioned this to my mom as I was excited to see that they both liked it, but then she said:

“The important thing is that they agreed with each other on it.”

Point taken…