The Three Bill Murray Comedies That Roger Ebert Hated the Most
That Roger Ebert was a tough one to figure out, especially when it came to his taste in comedies. While he loved some of the same Bill Murray movies that the rest of us find hilarious — Groundhog Day, Kingpin, the original Ghostbusters — he also had affection for oddities like Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (a review that Ebert wrote in the voice of the cat who hates Mondays).
While Ebert gave Murray credit when credit was due, the critic also had no problem kicking the comic when he was down. Here are the three Murray comedies that Ebert hated the most…
Charlie’s Angels
Murray was slumming when he played Bosley in the 2000 reboot of Charlie’s Angels. While the action-comedy hit had an all-star cast, featuring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz alongside Murray, Ebert could only muster up half a star. “Charlie’s Angels is eye candy for the blind,” he wrote. “It’s a movie without a brain in its three pretty little heads. … This movie is a dead zone in their lives, and mine.”
Ebert wanted to give Murray a pass but couldn’t quite do it. “The cast also contains Bill Murray, who likes to appear unbilled in a lot of his movies and picked the wrong one to shelve that policy,” he said. “He is winsome, cherubic and loopy, as usual, but the movie gives him nothing to push against. There’s the curious feeling he’s playing to himself.”
The Man Who Knew Too Little
Ebert gave one star to this Man, because “the movie is simply not funny.” His take on Murray’s performance isn’t all that different from his Charlie’s Angels review: “When he is funny, Bill Murray is very funny. But he needs something to push against. He is a reactor. His best screen characters are passive-aggressive: They insinuate themselves unwanted into ongoing scenarios.”
But as the main character, a clueless American tourist who accidentally gets involved in spy games, Murray’s comic talents are wasted, Ebert wrote: “The movie develops endless permutations on an idea that is not funny.”
Scrooged
Some people, like me, love the bitter holiday cheer of Scrooged. But Roger Ebert isn’t one of them, calling it “one of the most disquieting, unsettling films to come along in quite some time.”
So what was the problem, Rog? “I have no idea,” he wrote. “The chemistry must have been bad from the start. Or perhaps the material was simply intractable. One problem is that Murray frequently interjects one-liners that are at right angles to the material, blocking the flow of the story. He gives the impression, at those moments, that he is seeking to distance himself from the film, but a story like this works only if it seems to believe in itself.”
It’s the one comedy for which Ebert isn’t willing to cut the curmudgeonly Murray a break. “He’s often gruff in his movies, but in a way that lets you know he’s just kidding,” he argued. “This time, he doesn’t seem to be kidding.”
