Before the rating aggregator Rotten Tomatoes was the dominating provider of critiques on movies, Roger Ebert was that go-to source. He worked and critiqued alongside Gene Siskel until Siskel's untimely death in 1999. Roger Ebert made a career out of talking about movies. He talked about them so much that he reigned as a well-respected movie authority for the majority of the 1990s.
Ebert's thumbs up or thumbs down could make or break an opening weekend for a film. As passionately as Ebert spoke about movies he loved, he had no problem doing the same for movies he hated. There are movies he barely rated a star and then there are movies he vehemently gave a thumbs down to. A handful of those films stuck out like sore thumbs, with aggregated scores matching his sentiments completely.
10 Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo Caused Audience Suffering
2005
Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 9% |
Audience Score | 33% |
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo follows Deuce, a male gigolo, as his operation expands outside the United States. The first film, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, had a solid fan base, so the creators felt the need to follow up with a sequel. They even recruited the late Norm MacDonald for it.
Ebert tore apart the follow-up movie, not even giving it any stars and giving it an angry thumbs down. The first movie was all over the place, but still grounded in silly humor and a silly love story. Given the usual expectations of a Happy Madison Production film, the same was expected for the sequel. Ebert went as far as to say that to sit through this film was to cause suffering in the audience.

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Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
9 Sour Grapes Is an Unfunny Comedy Written and Directed by Larry David
1998

Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 27% |
Audience Score | 37% |
Sour Grapes is a comedy starring Steve Weber and Craig Bierko as cousins, where one wins a ton of money with the other's money through bets in Atlantic City. The film was written and directed by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David. The cousins debate about how they should split the money.
The only debate raised by Ebert was whether it was his most hated film. However, he ultimately kept North, a film by Rob Reiner, in that spot. Ebert goes as far as to suggest that David only makes good things when working with others, but not when making movies solo. For Ebert, the film was like watching a car crash.
8 The Director of An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn Hated the Film So Much He Took His Name off of It
1998

Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 8% |
Audience Score | 15% |
In Hollywood, Alan Smithee is the fake name that a director attributes to a film if they are unsatisfied with the final product. Ironically, that is exactly what happened with Arthur Hiller, as he removed his name from An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.
In the film, a director steals the final copy of a movie he worked on after losing control of the project. It's a mockumentary involving interviews and behind-the-scenes, even starring the controversial former producer Harvey Weinstein. Ebert says the only thing that could fix this movie is cutting out 86 minutes from the 86-minute runtime. He called the entire film incompetent.
7 Caligula Made Ebert Walk out of the Theater Two Hours Into the Film
1980

Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 21% |
Audience Score | 38% |
Caligula is a film about corruption, violence, and unhealthy eroticism in first-century Rome. The film stars Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren as Caligula and Caesonia, respectively. It was a gritty, gratuitous take on the debaucherous period in history.
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It was controversial, like the film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, which follows similar themes of violence and obscenity. Ebert said the film was sickening, utterly worthless, and shameful trash. He pointed out that it wasn't just bad from an artistic lens, it was bad in cinema and porn.
6 Ebert Said Last Rites Was So Bad the Screenplay Should’ve Caused Nausea
1988

Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | N/A |
Audience Score | 7% |
Last Rites is a film about a woman, played by Anne Twomey, who kills her husband after catching him with his lover. The lover, played by Daphne Zuniga, seeks refuge in the church after witnessing the horrid murder. However, both the man who was killed and the priest have ties to organized crime.
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This convoluted and loaded plot didn't stand a chance against Ebert. Ebert surmised that the film should've stopped at the screenplay, not making it past that stage, because of how badly it was written. He also felt that it was made just to see a priest chase after a sexy woman while painting the mob in a more noble light.
5 Ebert Felt That Staring at a Blank Screen Was Better Than Watching Mad Dog Time
1996
Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 17% |
Audience Score | 51% |
Mad Dog Time is a star-studded film with Richard Dreyfuss, Diane Lane, and Jeff Goldblum, to name just a few. The film follows Vic, played by Dreyfuss, as a mob boss who recently left a mental health hospital. His organization isn't like it used to be, as Goldblum's character runs the operations into uselessness. Lane plays a distraction to Goldblum's character, while Gabriel Byrne attempts to swoop in and control operations in the wake of its weakness.
Ebert says this film is like waiting on a bus in a city where you don't know if they have a bus line. The film made no sense, being muddled by an unguided, inconsistent plot.
4 She’s Out of Control Felt Like It Was Made by Beings From Another Planet
1989
Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 11% |
Audience Score | 52% |
She's Out of Control stars Tony Danza and Catherine Hicks. Danza plays a single dad with a daughter who reinvents her image with the help of Hicks' character. Doug, played by Danza, comes off as an overbearing father trying to control his young daughter.
Ebert found the film bizarre, shallow, lazy, and contrived. He also felt the father of the film comes off as more obsessive toward his daughter than possessive. Ebert said the best film to go see with similar themes is Say Anything, starring John Cusack, representing realistic father-daughter relationships.
3 B.A.P.S. Is Offensive and Embarrassing, Crossing the Satire Line
1997

Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 15% |
Audience Score | 67% |
B.A.P.S. is a film with Halle Berry and Natalie Desselle-Reid who play Nisy and Mickey, respectively. They team up to try to raise money for a combined business venture of a hair salon and soul food joint. They fly out to Los Angeles and meet an elderly billionaire, played by Martin Landau, who they essentially bond with.
The film was directed by the super-talented Robert Townsend, but even with this level of talent in the film, Ebert was left bored and disappointed. He felt the story perpetuated stereotypes as the main characters scornfully pursued their ventures. He argued that Black people would be offended, while white people would be embarrassed.
2 Freddy Got Fingered Was the Bottom of the Barrel of Bad Movies
2001
Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 12% |
Audience Score | 56% |
Freddy Got Fingered is a film about an up-and-coming cartoonist named Gordy, played by Tom Green, trying to make a name for himself. When he fails at pitching his cartoons, he returns home, where he's perpetually torn between impressing and annoying his dad. When he's had enough of his father, he lies and says that his father had molested his brother Freddy.
Director Tom Green treated this movie like a blank check from MTV, pushing the boundaries as far as he could while deconstructing the genre every step of the way. Ebert felt the film spearheaded neo-surrealism and gross-out humor and in doing so, it was not funny nor did it serve the plot.
1 Ebert Absolutely Hated North
1994
Rotten Tomatoes Score | |
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Critics Score | 14% |
Audience Score | 27% |
North is a film by Rob Reiner that follows a young boy, North, as he essentially shops for better parents since his parents are too busy to pay him in any mind. Elijah Wood portrays North as a kid on a journey trying out different families on different continents after he legally separates himself from his biological parents.
90s kids loved this movie, but likely for the silliness and the familiar face of Elijah Wood. When describing how he felt about North, Ebert overused the word hate, while noting how contrived the film was. He also found it unpleasant, artificial, and overly sentimental. He felt the premise was too much of a farce to be believable.
North
Sick of the neglect he receives from his mom and dad, a young boy leaves home and travels the world in search of new parents.
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Roger Ebert started reviewing films in 1967 and did so until 2011. He's said to have reviewed over 10,000 movies in his lifetime, which actually seems plausible. Ebert wrote a handful of films, one being Beyond The Valley of the Dolls. It was rated NC-17 and both critically and fan-appreciated. Ebert unfortunately passed away in 2013 at 70 years old, due to recurring cancer. While Ebert had plenty of negative things to say about movies, he also went out of his way to discuss his love for many films.
Roger Ebert's list of the worst films includes roughly 56 films that he expressed hate for, but only a handful stand out as the worst of the worst, with his official thumbs down. He managed to give some films like Joe Dirt one and a half stars. Ebert's views are typically matched by other critics, as seen compared to their corresponding Rotten Tomatoes scores. Through numerous literature reflections on films, his reputation lives on, with his website still active as a reliable source of film reviews.