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Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

Ebert: Zero stars

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. "Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.

Rob Schneider is back, playing a male prostitute (or, as the movie reminds us dozens of times, a "man whore"). He is not a gay hustler, but specializes in pleasuring women, although the movie's closest thing to a sex scene is when he wears diapers on orders from a giantess. Oh, and he goes to dinner with a woman with a laryngectomy, who sprays wine on him through her neck vent.

The plot: Deuce visits his friend T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) in Amsterdam, where T.J. is a pimp specializing in man-whores. Business is bad, because a serial killer is murdering male prostitutes, and so Deuce acts as a decoy to entrap the killer. In his investigation he encounters a woman with a penis for a nose. You don't want to know what happens when she sneezes.

Does this sound like a movie you want to see? It sounds to me like a movie that Columbia Pictures and the film's producers (Glenn S. Gainor, Jack Giarraputo, Tom McNulty, Nathan Talbert Reimann, Adam Sandler and John Schneider) should be discussing in long, sad conversations with their inner child.

The movie created a spot of controversy last February. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."

Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can't take it. Then I found he's not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" while passing on the opportunity to participate in "Million Dollar Baby," "Ray," "The Aviator," "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland." As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

just watching the previews of that movie, it looks like they rehashed the same jokes from the first one.

Ha.

I was considering seeing this movie until now. Often, Ebert gives good reviews to some of the crappiest movies ever made which has always made me think that he regularly takes payola. Maybe Schneider and friends forgot to pay him off for this one.

man is he awesome

My favourite Ebert review is the following. I've never, ever, hated a movie as much as this one.

Armageddon *

BY ROGER EBERT / July 1, 1998

Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. ``Armageddon'' is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

The plot covers many of the same bases as the recent ``Deep Impact,'' which, compared with ``Armageddon,'' belongs on the American Film Institute list. The movie tells a similar story at fast-forward speed, with Bruce Willis as an oil driller who is recruited to lead two teams on an emergency shuttle mission to an asteroid ``the size of Texas,'' which is about to crash into Earth and obliterate all life--``even viruses!'' Their job: Drill an 800-foot hole and stuff a bomb into it, to blow up the asteroid before it kills us.

OK, say you do succeed in blowing up an asteroid the size of Texas. What if a piece the size of Dallas is left? Wouldn't that be big enough to destroy life on Earth? What about a piece the size of Austin? Let's face it: Even an object the size of that big Wal-Mart outside Abilene would pretty much clean us out, if you count the parking lot.

Texas is a big state, but as a celestial object, it wouldn't be able to generate much gravity. Yet when the astronauts get to the asteroid, they walk around on it as if the gravity is the same as on Earth. There's no sensation of weightlessness--until it's needed, that is, and then a lunar buggy flies across a jagged canyon, Evel Knievel-style.

The movie begins with a Charlton Heston narration telling us about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Then we get the masterful title card, ``65 Million Years Later.'' The next scenes show an amateur astronomer spotting the object. We see top-level meetings at the Pentagon and in the White House. We meet Billy Bob Thornton, head of Mission Control in Houston, which apparently functions like a sports bar with a big screen for the fans, but no booze. Then we see ordinary people whose lives will be Changed Forever by the events to come. This stuff is all off the shelf--there's hardly an original idea in the movie.

``Armageddon'' reportedly used the services of nine writers. Why did it need any? The dialogue is either shouted one-liners or romantic drivel. ``It's gonna blow!'' is used so many times, I wonder if every single writer used it once, and then sat back from his word processor with a contented smile on his face, another day's work done.

Disaster movies always have little vignettes of everyday life. The dumbest in ``Armageddon'' involves two Japanese tourists in a New York taxi. After meteors turn an entire street into a flaming wasteland, the woman complains, ``I want to go shopping!'' I hope in Japan that line is redubbed as ``Nothing can save us but Gamera!'' Meanwhile, we wade through a romantic subplot involving Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck. Liv plays Bruce Willis' daughter. Ben is Willis' best driller (now, now). Bruce finds Liv in Ben's bunk on an oil platform and chases Ben all over the rig, trying to shoot him. (You would think the crew would be preoccupied by the semi-destruction of Manhattan, but it's never mentioned after it happens.) Helicopters arrive to take Willis to the mainland so he can head up the mission to save mankind, etc., and he insists on using only crews from his own rig--especially Affleck, who is ``like a son.'' That means Liv and Ben have a heart-rending parting scene. What is it about cinematographers and Liv Tyler? She is a beautiful young woman, but she's always being photographed while flat on her back, with her brassiere riding up around her chin and lots of wrinkles in her neck from trying to see what some guy is doing. (In this case, Affleck is tickling her navel with animal crackers.) Tyler is obviously a beneficiary of Take Your Daughter to Work Day. She's not only on the oil rig, but she attends training sessions with her dad and her boyfriend, hangs out in Mission Control and walks onto landing strips right next to guys wearing foil suits.

Characters in this movie actually say: ``I wanted to say ... that I'm sorry,'' ``We're not leaving them behind!,'' ``Guys--the clock is ticking!'' and ``This has turned into a surrealistic nightmare!'' Steve Buscemi, a crew member who is diagnosed with ``space dementia,'' looks at the asteroid's surface and adds, ``This place is like Dr. Seuss' worst nightmare.'' Quick--which Seuss book is he thinking of? There are several Red Digital Readout scenes, in which bombs tick down to zero. Do bomb designers do that for the convenience of interested onlookers who happen to be standing next to a bomb? There's even a retread of the classic scene where they're trying to disconnect the timer, and they have to decide whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire. The movie has forgotten that *this is not a terrorist bomb,* but a standard-issue U.S. military bomb, being defused by a military guy who is on board specifically because he knows about this bomb. A guy like that, the first thing he should know is, red or blue? ``Armageddon'' is loud, ugly and fragmented. Action sequences are cut together at bewildering speed out of hundreds of short edits, so that we can't see for sure what's happening, or how, or why. Important special-effects shots (such as the asteroid) have a murkiness of detail, and the movie cuts away before we get a good look. The few ``dramatic'' scenes consist of the sonorous recitation of ancient cliches. Only near the end, when every second counts, does the movie slow down: Life on Earth is about to end, but the hero delays saving the planet in order to recite cornball farewell platitudes.

Staggering into the silence of the theater lobby after the ordeal was over, I found a big poster that was fresh off the presses with the quotes of junket blurbsters. ``It will obliterate your senses!'' reports David Gillin, who obviously writes autobiographically. ``It will suck the air right out of your lungs!'' vows Diane Kaminsky.

If it does, consider it a mercy killing.

Holy shit! That's awesome.

The man didn't win the Pulitzer for nothin' .

Ebert has loads of street cred, as far as Im concerned.

And one day, he will be thin, while Vincent Gallo still will be the director of and lead in Brown Bunny.

I thought people didn't like Roger Ebert.

Ouch!

He's always been a favorite of mine...& anymore he's about the only movie critic I pay attention to.

Grades from the new issue of Entertainment Weekly

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - C+
Four Brothers - D
The Skeleton Key - B
The Great Raid - D+

Also, The Dukes Of Hazzard got a zero star review in the new Rolling Stone.

Because not all movies are this bad?

Wait, Rolling Stone gave a rating that's not 3-3.5 stars?

I've always heard people say that, but I think he's the greatest film critic ever. He's just about the only critic whose work I can read and know, regardless of how he feels about the film, whether it would be something I'd like or not - and I almost always come away from the film feeling that I wasn't led astray. THAT is what makes Ebert such a good critic.

oh, the humiliation!

I'm not always a huge fan of Ebert, too many thumbs up on mediocre movies.

Pauline Kael from the New Yorker was my favorite, her reviews were always smart, passionate and thourough. She's easily the best ever.

One of the slams on Ebert is that he CAN go a little too easy on stuff he probably should be giving a straight "thumbs down/less than 3 stars" rating to. Siskel never let him forget his positive review of the Burt Reynolds classic "Cop And A Half". But if you've followed him for years ( I've been a fan since the old PBS "Sneak Previews" days ) you can always kinda sense when he's drifting into that territory. Sometimes in his print reviews he'll even make note that he's "going there".

At the same time, I think he can be overly sensitive - in his "Team America" review he gave the movie 1 star, & seemed to be more bothered by the fact that the movie was even made instead of the movie itself.

Well, if you think about it, there's only two things a movie can be with this system: thumbs up (anywhere from just this side of mediocre to incredible) or thumbs down (just that side of mediocre to atrocious.) That's a pretty vague way to rate things. What would have rated 3 on his site has to get a thumbs up on the show, which isn't really saying very much about the merits of the movie.

Ebert and James Berardinelli http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/master.html are the movie critics I pay the most attention to. Ebert reviews a movie as you should. If you go away from the movie liking it then give it a good review. Even if it's Cop and a Half. He does mess them up from time to time. For instance, his review of Fight Club is terrible. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19991015/REVIEWS/910150302/1023 Completely misses the entire point of the movie.

Good on him. Battling addiction is harder than most people perceive.

Also note the automatic half-star increase he gives to any movie starring a large-breasted actress.

No coincidence that he cowrote a couple Russ Meyer movies.

10 stars! - Roger Ebert

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