The Comedy Roger Ebert Called ‘The Worst Movie Playing in Any Multiplex in America’

Film critic Roger Ebert liked at least one thing about the 2002 comedy Sorority Boys. “That is the title,” he wrote. “Pause by the poster on the way into the theater. That will be your high point.”

Ebert was no fan of dumb, lowbrow comedy, with a few notable exceptions. Just ask Rob Schneider, who started a spiteful feud with the critic over his brutal reviews. (“Bigelow reaches new giga-low,” wrote Ebert about Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo. Referencing The Hot Chick’s PG-13 rating, he said, “It is too vulgar for anyone under 13 and too dumb for anyone over 13.”)

But Ebert was a sweetheart to Schneider in comparison to his take on Sorority Boys, a comedy he called “a brainless autopilot sitcom ripoff.” The film’s simple plot does sound like an episode of Tom Hanks’ Bosom Buddies: “A group of college boys dress up as girls to prove their innocence for a crime they did not commit.”

A sitcom episode would have been a step up, Ebert wrote. “What is unusual about Sorority Boys is how it caves in to the homophobia of the audience by not even trying to make its cross-dressing heroes look like halfway, even one-tenth-of-the-way, plausible girls.”

That made Sorority Boys not only offensive but moronic — it’s a movie that only works if everyone is stupid. “All of the other characters are obviously mentally impaired,” Ebert argued. “How else to explain fraternity brothers who don’t recognize their own friends in drag?” The coeds who invite the fellas to join their sorority don’t notice their stubble. A father tries to pick up his son, oblivious that his own kid is wearing a dress. Oof.

Ebert gets that he’s being literal and that some would tell him to just go along with the joke. There’s just one problem, he explained: “The joke is not funny. The movie is not funny.” 

You can practically hear Ebert tearing his hair out as he ranted about the movie’s idiocy. “Because the intelligence level of the characters must be low, very low, very very low, for the masquerade to work, the movie contains no wit, only labored gags involving falsies, lipstick, unruly erections and straight guys who don't realize they're trying to pick up a man.”

Unsurprisingly, Ebert wasn’t alone. Sorority Boys has a 12 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviews blasting the comedy. 

“After being subjected to this painful movie ... you’ll be rendered speechless,” opined the Seattle Times. “Not by any demonstrable good humor, but because of light brain damage.”

“There’s nothing interesting about it at all,” according to Salon.

“As appalling as any ‘comedy’ to ever spill from a projector’s lens,” griped Globe and Mail.

The reviews are so bad that one is almost tempted to check out Sorority Boys to see if it could truly be that terrible. Almost. 

“Sorority Boys will be the worst movie playing in any multiplex in America this weekend,” Ebert concluded in his half-star review. “And, yes, I realize (the Britney Spears clunker) Crossroads is still out there.”