Siskel & Ebert (TV Series)

Congo/The Glass Shield/Pocahontas/Fluke (1995)

Roger Ebert: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Roger Ebert - Host : [reviewing "Pocahontas"]  I liked the film, but I must say, if I had to rank the last five Disney films, starting with "Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", and "The Lion King", I would rank this fifth out of those five, in quality, and I'll tell you why. It doesn't have a really fun villain. Uh, the Indians are the good guys, the settlers are not really allowed to be the bad guys, I mean, when there's one person who is killed, it's done by mistake by a young kid who feels bad about it. And the governor of the colony is a buffoon who isn't really taken seriously. And the others, except for John Smith, are shallow characters, so that you don't have the fun, for example, of the octopus in "Little Mermaid", or the Beast in "Beauty and the Beast". You don't have a really great, fun villain, and so the movie, as a result, is kind of serious, and a little bit of a downer at times.

  Gene Siskel - Host : What's wrong with that?

  Roger Ebert - Host : Nothing is wrong with it...

  Gene Siskel - Host : You're forcing, Roger, you're forcing this...

  Roger Ebert - Host : What I'm talking about is the entertainment value of the five.

  Gene Siskel - Host : You're forcing this to be like the other kind- the other pictures, and this film wants to be a little- it IS a more serious subject matter.

  Roger Ebert - Host : Well, if you were gonna rank the five, where would you place it?

  Gene Siskel - Host : I wouldn't put it at the bottom. Uh, I'd probably put it, uh, in the middle. My favorite is "Beauty and the Beast", and I have a real affection for "Little Mermaid". But this is, this is serious themes. It isn't about the, the underwater fantasy characters. This is real stuff. It should be more serious, and I really think the film communicates at a whole other level. The villain, the villain...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Well, I'm not, I'm not criticizing it. I'm making an observation about the entertainment value of the movie, and I think it's valid.

  Gene Siskel - Host : The "entertainment value" is in the drawing and in the themes. I think it's a really special piece of work.

• Gene Siskel - Host : I wish the film company that made "Congo" would've had the courage, or maybe the stupidity, to release to us scenes of the talking gorilla with her schoolgirl voice that's so inappropriate. I wish you also could've seen the first shot of the talking gorilla, where the head covering the actor is plainly visible. More problems: Tim Curry's character is a nut, Ernie Hudson's is a lightweight as their guide, and Joe Don Baker a buffoon as the villain. In short, "Congo" is a mess. I'd like to say it's so bad it's good, but in its concluding act, it was simply boring.

  Roger Ebert - Host : I disagree, I agree with what you observed, I disagree with your interpretation. First of all, Ernie Hudson was fabulous as the guide, he reminded me of, uh, Clark Gable in the way that he handled...

  Gene Siskel - Host : [incredulously]  What?

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...This role, the way that he balanced humor with kind of a...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Clark Gable?

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...Bemused detachment, now you talk about...

  Gene Siskel - Host : I thought I had heard it all!

  Roger Ebert - Host : Let's keep going. You talk about the gorilla's bad voice that you didn't like. Gene, I think you missed the point: She uses American sign language...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yes.

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...In order to activate a speech synthesizer, and it's supposed to be funny. This movie was written by John Patrick Shanley, it was in the same, uh, mood as his movie "Joe Versus the Volcano". It was hilarious.

  Gene Siskel - Host : I laughed AT it, not WITH it. This has some goofy funniness to it...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Uh, I think if people go with the right, uh, state of mind, they're gonna have a terrific time.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yeah, have a couple of martinis.

• Roger Ebert - Host : If you were to name the top three people responsible for violence in movies today, as far as the box office is concerned, Oliver Stone wouldn't be anywhere on that list. The three top names would be Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Bruce Willis. And what do those three names have in common? Conservative Republicans who donate a lot of money to the party, and so somehow, Dole doesn't mention those. In fact, he recommends the Schwarzenegger picture, "True Lies", says he likes it, even though he hasn't seen that EITHER, yet he says he doesn't like "loveless sex" in the movies. If he had SEEN "True Lies", he would've seen a scene in which a woman stripteases for a man she doesn't know is her own husband! I bet he really would've considered that to be "love in marriage". He doesn't seem to be able to make the connection between real things that make a difference in our society, and the shadows of those things, which are the movies. He approves of guns in the streets, but he doesn't approve of guns on the screen. So it seems to me that by making this speech, based on movies he hasn't seen, hasn't thought about, he's basically revealing himself as somebody who only wants to cater to what he thinks is his constituency, doesn't want to make a serious contribution to the national debate.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Two things: One, uh... this impulse, if you take it at its best, the impulse is, I can't control the real world, so I'm gonna control the fantasy world...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Blame the messenger.

  Gene Siskel - Host : But I'm gonna control, try to control this movie theater. The second thing is, that I don't want us to get turned around in the public's mind and saying, "Well they really like those bad movies." Not true! We dump on them EVERY, SINGLE, WEEK.