movie reviewer gene shalit

Gene Shalit

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• 1985 • 1 ep

• Host (1980-1981)

• Gene Scallop (voice)
• 2007 • 1 ep

• Gene Shalit (voice)
• 1994–1995 • 3 eps

• Gene Shalit (uncredited)

Personal details

• 6′ (1.83 m)
• March 25 , 1926
• New York City, New York, USA
• Other works TV commercial: Glad Ware (2003)
• 1 Portrayal

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• Trivia Hosted "The Critics Corner" on The Today Show.
• Quotes Some films could only have been cast in one way: Screen tests were given the losers got the parts.
• Trademarks Oversized handlebar moustache
• How old is Gene Shalit?
• When was Gene Shalit born?
• Where was Gene Shalit born?

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Whether it was explosive action movies like Rabbi P.I. and Dennis the Menace II Society or heartwarming family films like The Cockroach King and D.T.: The Drunken Terrestrial , esteemed film critic Jay Sherman always offered the same reaction: “It stinks!” 

In an era when film critics like Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert and Gene Shalit were household names, two pivotal writers of The Simpsons , Al Jean and Mike Reiss, decided to create a new series centered around the host of a movie review program. The Critic debuted on January 26, 1994, and it lasted for a total of 23 episodes. The first season aired on ABC, but its cynical, smart and snarky sensibilities never quite fit in with the family-friendly TGIF crowd. The second season aired on FOX right after The Simpsons , where it retained a healthy amount of The Simpsons ’ massive audience. Nonetheless, The Critic was unceremoniously canceled thanks to an executive who hated the show, its final episode airing on May 5, 1995. 

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Years before Futurama and decades before Disenchanted , The Critic was the first show perceived by the public to be a sort of spin-off of The Simpsons . It was created by Jean and Reiss, it was produced by Simpsons executive producer James L. Brooks and it starred Saturday Night Live alum Jon Lovitz, a frequent Simpsons guest star . It also featured the same seamless blend of lowbrow and highbrow humor that The Simpsons had mastered. 

The Critic did seek to carve out its own niche though, sometimes to its detriment. Whereas Futurama and Disenchanted made use of Matt Groening’s signature art style, The Critic tried to find its own look. And while Homer Simpson was a lovable moron, Jay Sherman was a self-centered, well-educated elitist who loved foreign films, which made him difficult to sympathize with. 

Despite its shortcomings, The Critic has often been cited as one of the best prematurely canceled shows of all time, and its fan base remains substantial to this day. Just recently, when the title of Quentin Tarantino ’s last film was revealed to be The Film Critic , legions of Critic fans jokingly rejoiced about Jay Sherman’s return . Many of those same fans have advocated for a reboot of The Critic , chief among them is the voice of Jay Sherman himself, Jon Lovitz , who has frequently expressed his desire to play the character again. But Jean and Reiss, who join us here to talk about The Critic ’s brief but brilliant run, aren’t quite so sure the show could make it today.

Mike Reiss , co-creator of The Critic , author of Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons : It was 1993, and Al Jean and I had just finished running The Simpsons . We’d done two years as the showrunners, and we got a development deal with James L. Brooks’ company Gracie Films. Our job was to come up with ideas for TV series for Jim Brooks to take to ABC. We pitched him a few ideas that he didn’t really go for, then he came to us with an idea for a live-action show about the makeup woman for The Today Show . 

Honestly, we didn’t love it. It didn’t sound like our kind of idea, but we kicked it around and tried to make it work: “There could be a fat weatherman on the show, and there could be a movie critic like Gene Shalit.” That got us excited — we were having fun with the idea of doing something with a film critic on a daily show.

Around that time, Jim Brooks called us in for another meeting and asked us, “Do you like Jon Lovitz?” We said we loved him and that we’d had him on The Simpsons three times and that he made us laugh. That’s when we came up with the idea, “Let’s do a show with Jon Lovitz playing a film critic.” 

Actually, to rewind just a little bit — right after Al and I finished with The Simpsons , Matt Groening came to us and said, “I want to do a spin-off show with Krusty the Clown.” Al and I came up with all of these ideas where Krusty is living in New York and he’s got his own show. He has a Ted Turner-type boss and a sassy makeup woman. He’s also a divorced dad with a little kid. By the time we brought it to Matt though, he’d changed his mind and wanted to do a live-action reality show with Krusty. Neither of those happened, of course, but when Al and I were developing The Critic , we used many of the same elements from our Krusty pitch.

Anyway, we beat out the idea for The Critic , figured out the characters, wrote the whole script and then approached Jon Lovitz. We brought it to him, and to our surprise, he said, “I’m not gonna do that, I’m a movie star!” He wasn’t wrong either. A League of Their Own did very well, and he had three movies lined up after that. 

Jim Brooks thought maybe we could go somewhere else, like Martin Short, but Al and I said, “No, it’s got to be Lovitz. We wrote this for Lovitz.” The idea was dying right there, but then Al pitched an idea that I’d brought up earlier: “What if it’s an animated show?” That turned everything around. Suddenly we could work around Lovitz’s schedule and that’s how The Critic became animated.

Even then, Lovitz was a little reluctant to do it. He didn’t want to be like Alan Reid, the voice of Fred Flintstone. Alan Reid had a great career in the movies, but after he became Fred Flintstone, that’s the first thing you thought of when you heard his voice in a movie. That worried Lovitz, but they offered him an amazing deal. It was a lot of money, and it was with James L. Brooks, so he eventually agreed.

Al Jean , co-creator of The Critic , current showrunner of The Simpsons : As a writer, it’s great to have a voice in your head, and Jon Lovitz has such a distinctive one. We were always writing it for him, but he said the character shouldn’t look like him, so we modeled the original design after Andy Kaufman . 

Reiss: Jim Brooks had an amazing deal with ABC. On the strength of his past work, ABC gave him a deal where whatever he brought in, ABC would make and put it on the air for 22 episodes. But even though ABC couldn’t say no when we brought them The Critic , they said “No.” They didn’t want to do it. It was very expensive, and to be fair, it wasn’t a very ABC idea. We went there because that’s where the deal was, but it was probably the last place we would have gone with an idea like this. And so, we had to negotiate with them, and they came down to 13 episodes. 

The funny thing about The Critic is that there were nothing but warning bells all the way through. It was like a horror movie where everybody was trying to stop us at every turn. 

Pre-Production

Reiss: I had a lot of fun making this show. We had a great writing staff of people who were handpicked from old friends and people we knew from The Harvard Lampoon . We also found some great new writers. Judd Apatow consulted on the show, and everyone was a movie nut and everyone was focused and pitched great ideas. 

It also wasn’t an oppressive workload like The Simpsons either. We’d done 22 episodes in one season of The Simpsons and 24 the next. It was so hard. I hated it. I gained 70 pounds. The Critic was only 13 episodes, so we had room to breathe.

Casting was great, too. We knew we’d be doing a lot of celebrity impressions, and I love impressionists. They’d just come in and do their act for us; it was so entertaining. We ended up casting Maurice LaMarche, who is the world’s greatest impressionist. Nick Jameson was great as well. He’d do like 30 characters in an episode. Christine Cavanaugh was a lovely person, and Charles Napier was a wonderful character actor who no one ever asked to do comedy before. The makeup woman was played by Doris Grau, the script supervisor on The Simpsons . We created the whole character around her. 

Most of all, Lovitz was a ton of fun. For at least a season, he had trepidation about doing the whole thing, but when you put him in front of a mic, he’s in heaven. People have asked me if that’s what he’s really like, and my answer always is, “No, it isn’t. That’s just a character he plays 24 hours a day.” Jon Lovitz is that guy, but it’s a put-on. In real life, I think he has a rather fragile ego and he’s full of self-doubt, but he’s always playing that character and he’s always funny. 

Putting together that first season was all a party, up until the moment we came on the air. 

‘The Critic’ on ABC

Reiss: Before The Critic came on the air, we had a booth at Comic-Con to promote the show. We had T-shirts made up with The Critic on it and a life-size cutout of Jay Sherman. Man, people walked right past us — nobody had the slightest interest in it. We sold one T-shirt to Bill Mumy and Miguel Ferrer. They went in together and bought one Critic T-shirt. I should have known then it was going to be a rough time for us.

When The Critic debuted, it was part of the TGIF block on ABC, which was nothing but family shows. We followed Home Improvement , this lump of nothing that was just one of the dumbest number one shows in TV history. 

Jean: That first night, we retained 87 percent of Home Improvement ’s audience, which was an enormous number.

Reiss: We got great ratings the first night, and we got very good reviews. Then, a couple of days later, my assistant walks in with a big box, and I say, “What’s that?” She says, “That’s hate mail.” 

The audience hated the show. They especially hated a moment where Jay met this actress, slept with her and Jay’s son walked in on them in bed. The Home Improvement crowd really hated seeing that. By the second week, we were done. It was a 44-percent drop. Variety had said, “The second of The Critic had fans screaming and running for the aisles.” We were doomed. 

By episode four or five, we were hemorrhaging viewers so bad that Bob Iger, the head of ABC, called us into his office to say, “What are we going to do about The Critic ?” To their credit, ABC was very supportive, and he was trying to be helpful. On his wall, he had the whole ABC schedule on a big chart, and he said, “Where on this board should The Critic go?” I remember looking at it and thinking, “Where it should go is on FOX, after The Simpsons .”

They gave us one more episode, then they yanked us off the air and burned off the rest of the episodes during the summer. ABC did their best, though; the audience just wasn’t interested. I have no ill will toward ABC, unlike part two of this story. 

‘The Critic’ on FOX

Reiss: Jim Brooks, being a very powerful man, was able to take The Critic to FOX to air after The Simpsons . During the development of Season Two, there was a chance to re-examine the show a bit. We re-recorded the theme song, we added a love interest and her daughter to give Jay somebody in his life and we redesigned the characters and softened some of the edges. 

It was a chance to fix some of what had bothered me about the look of the first season. When we were originally developing the show, I said I wanted lush, painted backgrounds. I wanted them to look like a New Yorker cover and we got that, but when it came to designing the characters, they were designed by committee. We had four very talented artists contributing to the show, but there was no consistency that a Matt Groening would give you or that South Park has.

Jean: Mike is correct about that. If you look at The Simpsons and Futurama , the genius of Matt Groening is that he has these designs that are so simple, but they also convey a great amount of emotion. But with The Critic , it has a “design by committee” quality to it, and I was happy when we redesigned them in Season Two.

Reiss: As part of Jim Brooks’ deal, we got just 10 episodes, and Al and I had to provide two new episodes of The Simpsons . There was also the idea that Jim Brooks had: “Let’s do a crossover show with The Simpsons .”

‘A Star Is Burns’

Reiss: Jim Brooks had done crossover episodes before on his other shows, like Rhoda and Mary Tyler Moore . It was a real TV tradition. He proposed the idea, but the staff of The Simpsons hated the idea. People were making a big stink about it. Many of these were the writers that we’d hired and some had only been there a few weeks, but it became this big issue. We went back to Jim, and he said, “When did this become a democracy?” 

We just plowed ahead and did it. The Simpsons episode “A Star Is Burns” was written and produced by The Critic staff. The Simpsons writers had nothing to do with it, but when they were asked if they’d like their name to appear on it, they all said yes and they all got paid for it. 

Famously, Matt Groening also took his name off the episode. Matt had quietly said, “I don’t approve of this, please take my name off of it.” Al and I didn’t even notice, but it might have been the Los Angeles Times who noticed it, and it turned into a whole controversy. It wasn’t a big thing, though. It really wasn’t. 

Jean: At the time, I know Matt was fearful about there being more than one crossover between the two series. As for me, I thought then and I think now that “A Star Is Burns” is a good episode of The Simpsons . There are a lot of things in that episode that really stand out — like, “They’re not saying ‘Boo,’ they’re saying ‘Boo-urns!’” and “You said the quiet part out loud.” The phrase comes from that episode!

We’ve also done other crossovers on The Simpsons like The X-Files , Futurama , and at the request of Family Guy , we allowed them to do a crossover with us. In a limited fashion, I think it’s great. Why not give it a try? I wouldn’t do it more than once though.

‘Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice’

Reiss: Season Two contains what I think was the best episode of The Critic — “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice,” where Siskel and Ebert break up and Jay auditions to become both of their new partners, which was a Jim Brooks idea. 

Previously, Siskel and Ebert had reviewed The Critic . It was the only show they ever reviewed, but they didn’t like it! They were perfectly game to be guest stars, though, and they did whatever we asked them to do. Funny enough, we talked to them separately, and they were both bad-mouthing the other guy — that really was a fraught relationship. Both called afterwards to say, “I was definitely better than that other guy, right?” It was that petty. 

Jean: I flew to Chicago to record them. We recorded them together, and after every take, Gene would go, “Who was better?” I was diplomatic at the time, but now that they’re both passed, I’ll say that Roger was a slightly better actor.

Reiss: One of them clearly was the better actor, and that was Roger Ebert. I say that with apologies to Gene Siskel’s widow.

Jean: The Critic overall — and this episode in particular — is a bit of a time capsule. It was a period when people went to the movies a lot and when movie critics could make six figures, as opposed to now when Rotten Tomatoes has made them sort of a cog in a machine. The Siskel and Ebert episode is my favorite episode, too, but when I look at it now, there isn’t any film critic today that has the clout comparable to those two guys. 

Regime Change at FOX

Reiss: During our time at The Simpsons , we saw show after show fail after The Simpsons and nothing held the audience, but we had high hopes for The Critic being put there. Jim Brooks had worked out a complex deal, but FOX was on board and we had the support of the president of the network. Then, in the year it took to make those new episodes, the president of FOX got fired and a new president came in who hated The Critic . 

I know you’re not supposed to mention people by name, but I’ll mention his name: John Matoian. He came in as president of FOX and was there for a very brief time. As far as I know, he was never seen again. As far as I know, this man only existed to cancel The Critic .

Jean: When The Critic debuted after The Simpsons , it did really well. On ABC, there was a huge drop off after that first episode, but at FOX, we retained nearly 90 percent of The Simpsons ’ audience every week. That made it the second highest show on FOX at the time, so it should have gotten renewed. It was canceled due to politics.

Reiss: Finally, here is a show that can follow The Simpsons and maintain the audience. John Matoian said, “I’m glad they liked the show. Let’s see how they do next week with no advertising.” After that, we were still doing fine. But week after week, John Matoian would call us up and say, “I just wanted to tell you, I hated this week’s episode.” He just loved hating our show. 

Then, one day, he called us in for a meeting with the FOX brass and said, “I want to play an episode of your show, and I want you to tell me what’s funny.” He put the show on, and it started playing and all the younger executives were laughing. They knew they weren’t supposed to like this. They were supposed to not laugh and make the boss happy, but they were cracking up. John Matoian turned around and went, “Why are you laughing!?!?” 

Jean: The thing that really cracked them up was Hee-Haw: The Next Generation . He was so mad at them for laughing at that.

Reiss: He was just a dick. Shortly after that, he canceled The Critic and replaced it with a show called House of Buggin ’ that he had generated. Not long after that, he was gone. 

Now, here’s the part nobody knows: At the time, there was a new network starting up — UPN. We went to UPN, and they were considering doing The Critic . They wanted changes, though. Mainly, they didn’t want so much of the critic in it. They wanted to focus on the son and his friends at school. That’s where I said, “No.” It was enough. I didn’t like where they were going, and I couldn’t take being canceled by three networks in three years so that was it.

‘The Critic’ Webisodes

Reiss: Around the year 2000, everyone was creating content for the internet. Jim Brooks came to us and said, “Do you want to create The Critic shorts for the internet?” By then, Al and I had amicably broken up as a team, but we came back together to write these. We also got Jon Lovitz back. What sold us on the idea was that a movie could come out, and two weeks later, we could have a parody about it. Normally, there was a nine-month gap from writing an episode until it aired, so this was impressive to us.

We did 10 of them. We wrote them, produced them and then they sat for a year . It took longer than it would have taken on television. I was so frustrated about this that I quit the project, and Al did the last one by himself.

Jay Sherman in Repose

Reiss: Al and I were the first people to create an animated show from The Simpsons , and our idea was “Let’s do everything differently from The Simpsons .” Everything about The Critic is separate from The Simpsons . It’s urban, not suburban. Jay is single, he’s not married. He’s smart, Homer’s stupid. He’s rich, Homer’s middle class. Also, we made it so different from The Simpsons that it failed while The Simpsons succeeded. 

Jean: I’m proud of The Critic . I always laugh at Lovitz, and Maurice’s impressions are brilliant. It’s also gotten a tremendous post-cancellation respect from a lot of people. It’s not The Simpsons , and that was by design. With both The Critic and Futurama , there was a conscious effort not to make it too much like The Simpsons , which is why neither show is about a nuclear family. Because of that, both of them had a more difficult time finding an audience.

Animated shows in particular do better with a lead-in with the same kind of humor, and after The Critic , Fox began putting all kinds of animated shows after The Simpsons , like King of the Hill and Futurama . That could have been The Critic , especially since it did well in the ratings on FOX, but I’m also happy to have been on The Simpsons all these years, so it all works out. 

Reiss: To date, I have very mixed feelings about The Critic . I’m very disappointed in my own work on the show. For my book, I had to go back and watch the shows again after not having watched them in years, and when I watched them, I said, “Wow they’re funny.” They’re really funny and they’re really smart, which I’m really proud of, but that’s it. They lacked the emotional depth of The Simpsons . I wish it’d been more heartfelt, and I wish there’d been more nuance to our characters. It didn’t have to be as big and as popular as The Simpsons , but I wish it had the heart and resonance that The Simpsons has had. 

A Critic reboot comes up all the time. Jon Lovitz, who was so reluctant to do the show at first, wants to do it again. He’s even said he’d do it in live action. I’m probably the most reluctant to do it for many reasons. One thing is, half the cast of The Critic is dead. The Critic was also a parody of a thing that was very popular at the time, but critic review shows like Siskel and Ebert don’t exist anymore. There’s no powerhouse like that. People don’t even go to the movies anymore. I’m happy people remember The Critic and like it so much, but it’s of another time. 

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Vintage Gene Shalit, In Honor of His “Today Show” Departure

Gene Shalit, the famously mustachioed morning TV movie reviewer, is leaving the Today Show after 37 years. Why is the 85-year-old heading off for greener pastures? “It’s enough already,” Shalit says. The Today Show will air a Shalit retrospective on Thursday, and I went searching for some entertaining vintage Shalit to post in honor of his departure. What I found was a clip that probably won’t make that retrospective. It’s pretty dark!

In the video below, Shalit is interviewing John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd circa 1981. They are there to promote the release of their Best of the Blues Brothers album and their new movie Neighbors . Belushi’s attitude is one of bemused disdain. He tells Shalit, “Your hair looks like the ant farm on fire,” and when Shalit asks him what he’d like to eat for his last meal, he says, “a cottage cheese and pineapple plate.” The interview turns even more prophetically morbid after that. Shalit asks the pair what they’d like to be doing in ten years. Belushi says jokingly, ” Fiddler on the Roof .” To which Aykroyd replies, “Directing him in Fiddler , if we’re still alive.” 

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Gene Shalit leaving after 41 years on TODAY

TODAY takes a look back at some of the memorable moments from the show’s beloved movie critic, Gene Shalit. Legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg also wishes the iconic movie critic a grand farewell.

Read an interview from Gene Shalit's longtime producer Guy Ludwig , who shares his memories of the legend.

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The Brancatelli Blog

Sometimes funny, always satirical

Gene Shalit, Where Art Thou?

Gene Shalit , the Mark Twain of film criticism, turned 95 last Thursday. He spent his long career (1970-2010) on NBC’s Today Show . His schtick consisted of wearing garish bow ties and black-framed glasses and punning his way through movie reviews. At the height of his fame, a Gene Shalit Halloween mask came out. You know you’ve made it when there’s a Halloween mask of you. I enjoyed watching him for his wit, bow tie, and mocking movie reviews. My mother enjoyed him, too, mainly for the mocking. I had a friend in high school who used to impersonate him, which was a dangerous thing to do outside of honors classes. You risk getting beaten up, but he did it anyway.

I traveled recently to Las Vegas to visit my mother and had a chance to look over the Internet movies in my hotel room. This was the first time I’ve flown anywhere since moving back to California nearly two years ago. I haven’t been in a hotel since then, either. It didn’t take me long to recall Vladimir Nabokov’s character, Humbert Humbert, complaining about American hotels being the noisiest places in the world, and my room wasn’t even near an elevator. I also remembered one of my own posts about the people in the apartment upstairs holding a bowling tournament (see The People in Apartment 22 ). Somehow or other, in a hotel with 35 floors and reduced occupancy because of Covid, I still managed to have people in the room above me bowling.

Out of more than two dozen movies available, I watched five trailers and rented none. The one that came closest was set during World War One, but in the end I didn’t find it compelling enough. What I did find compelling were the movie descriptions, which ranged from ungrammatical to boring to ridiculous.

For instance, there was one about a 17-year-old, high school student named Millie who “swaps bodies with an infamous serial killer.” Afterward, the description notes, “things get freaky,” as if they were normal up to that point. This sounded like a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the episode in Star Trek where Captain Kirk’s former girlfriend switches bodies with him to take over the Enterprise (see “Turnabout Intruder” from June 3, 1969).

Another teen movie had me stammering with: “After a group of teens begin to mysteriously disappear, the locals believe it is the work of an urban legend known as The Empty Man.” First, “group of teens” is the subject of the sentence and should take the third-person, singular verb “begins.” Second, they’ve split the infinitive by saying “to mysteriously disappear.” Not all disappearances are mysteries, but wouldn’t it have been better to say “to disappear mysteriously,” or just “to disappear”? Third, they could have placed The Empty Man in quotes, but then they probably would have committed the horror of putting the period outside the quotation marks. That would have sent me to the concierge.

We pole vault from the sublime into the ridiculous with the following descriptions, both of which make me wonder how these movies were ever made, but then there’s a movie about snakes on a plane, so go figure.

First, a “traumatic accident leaves a couple in a surreal state of being that takes them on a disorienting journey through the duality of their shared moments.” I had to read that four times, and I’m still not sure what it means. The phrase “surreal state of being” sounds like something from Heidegger I had to read in graduate school. Now that I think of it, maybe it makes more sense in German. In any case, they lost me at “the duality of their shared moments.” I’m not interested in the duality of shared anything. Apart from the traumatic accident, this is definitely not something you’d find on Spike TV.

Then there was this, which had me shaking my head: “A young woman desperately wants to believe the world that she sees and feels is real…but instead she is forced to question everything, and everyone, around her.” I’m not sure what to say except, are you kidding? Subjecting the audience to an inner journey like this reminds me of young children playing with their feces and marveling at it. Maybe that’s where we’re headed now. Still, I suspect this movie would be better if it told a story. Maybe it does, but, if so, why doesn’t the description tell me? I wasn’t going to spend $19.95 and 90 minutes of my time to find out.

Look, I don’t need things blowing up à la Bruce Willis and Jackie Chan. I just want to hear a story like every other human being. And, while we’re at it, why are there commas around “and everyone”? Gene, dude, where art thou?

Image credits: feature by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash ; blurred image by Jr Korpa on Unsplash . Want more (why wouldn’t you)? Go to  Robert Brancatelli . The Brancatelli Blog is a member of  The Free Media Alliance , which “promotes alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”

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I saw mention of Shalit’s birthday recently as well – haven’t thought of him in ages, but always enjoyed his reviews. About the movie selections in your hotel room; they sound rather awful, but I would really hate to read what the person who wrote those ‘enticements’ would come up with for “Gone With the Wind”, “Citizen Kane”, etc..

Robert J Brancatelli, Chief of the Grammar Police. By the way, that is a compliment. The proverbial pitch, which is the summary of the movie, has deteriorated to a compendium of box-checking. Given my conservative POV, I eschew the usual plot developments such as ” When a group of 250 pound former NFL linebackers are taken down by a kick-ass girl, Hannah, a 97 pound former Loreal model, currently working in a soup kitchen, the authorities are called in to investigate. The lead detective, a mulatto former LGBTQ activist, . . . ” Uh, you get my point.

Some day Hollywood will decide to write a story based on, oh I don’t know, an actual plot. If it has a handful of old, straight, Christian, white men in it, so be it.

At the juncture in our cinematic history, genuine writing may take place.

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A Final Rave Review for Gene Shalit

The mustachioed punster, who’s leaving "today" after 40 years, never lost his enthusiasm for the movies, even in an age where everybody's a critic., by jere hester • published november 10, 2010 • updated on november 10, 2010 at 9:30 pm.

News that Gene Shalit is ending his 40-year stint reviewing movies for NBC's "Today" show has inspired us to channel him in offering this assessment: He proved a Gene-uine joy to watch, and is, in his way, a Gene-ius of the craft. Watching Shalit’s reviews are like getting a recommendation from a loveably eccentric pal – one whose bushy hair and prominent handlebar mustache are as outrageous as his puns. The worst thing anybody can say about Shalit is that he, on many occasions, is too generous with his praise, too quick to offer up blurb-friendly one-liners. That's earned him good-natured mockery, everywhere from “Saturday Night Live” to a “ Family Guy ” episode in which Shalit mugged Peter (“Don’t ‘Panic Room,’” he said. “I’m not going to ‘ William Hurt ’ you. I only want your ‘Tango and Cash.’ So just ‘Pay it Forward’ and we’ll all be ‘Happy Gilmore’”). But what's most distinguished Shalit, besides his unique appearance and goofily effusive style, is that he never lost enthusiasm for the movies. While some critics pick endlessly over meaning and nuance, Shalit recognizes the power of a good popcorn flick. He could be relied upon to quickly – and entertainingly – tell you whether your $1.50 (the average price of a movie ticket when he started on “Today” in 1970) or the $10 or so today would buy you a couple hours of escape from life. The substance behind Shalit’s shtick is that he’s always approached the job as a movie fan. He stuck to his ways as he became a pop-culture figure – presaging the stardom of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert – and even as the Internet made everybody a critic. In announcing the official end of his “Today” gig, the 84-year-old Shalit reported that, among other plans, he’ll be taking his act online. Meanwhile, “Today” is slated to air a salute to Shalit Thursday, his final day on the program. After four decades of previews, it’s a safe bet the tribute will be, to use a Shalit-friendly word, “Terrific!”

Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multi-media NY City News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism . He is the former City Editor of the New York Daily News , where he started as a reporter in 1992. Follow him on Twitter .

Amid father’s fame, Peter Shalit, ’81, ’90, makes his own name in medicine

Interview by Anna Norman | Photo by Michael Kearney | September 1, 2006

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I started med school the year that the epidemic had just started. I kind of grew up in medicine with HIV unfolding as I went through my training, so I really feel like I’ve seen it from the beginning.

That’s tough, because I think there are a number of gay people who are more comfortable going to a place where they don’t have that barrier of feeling like they’re different. There are two main issues. One is the need for more gay-oriented practices, but the other is for all the other practices to give appropriate care to their gay and lesbian patients. Respectful care that focuses on the needs of those people.

At the time, it was right at the worst part of the AIDS epidemic, when we really didn’t have good treatment at all, and patients could pretty much expect to die. My role as a physician was pretty much to make sure the quality of the life they had was the best possible, but a lot of people were miserable, and they didn’t want to experience the last few months of suffering. They just wanted it to be done. And I still feel that should be a person’s right. It’s not the same as somebody being mentally ill or suicidal—it’s a very rational decision. The interesting thing is that now that there is good treatment for HIV, none of my patients has that desire anymore.

I’ve always just liked plants and growing things. Originally, when I went to school, that was what I wanted to do. My goal was to do plant breeding or gene splicing in plants. I like plants personally—I have a nice personal relationship with them, but it didn’t seem ultimately like a good career. I really like people better.

It’s a combination of things. I don’t think he got the movie, but I don’t think that means he’s bigoted, and that was the issue. He didn’t see it as a romantic love story, and I did. But my relationship with him for years has been that I don’t take anything he reviews personally. If he doesn’t like a movie, he just doesn’t like the movie. A lot of people saw his review as being homophobic, and I really had to defend him and help him defend himself.

The effect it had on me was to not want to be like him. He’s such a strong personality, and I didn’t want to compete. The other thing is that I’m not like him, and I wouldn’t be good doing what he does. I really have sympathy for people who sort of take over for one of their parents in their parent’s career, because I would think that would be a difficult place to be—to step into your parent’s shoes.

I’d love to visit the South American rain forests, because a lot of the plants I grow come from there. I’d like to see them in the wild. The second thing I’d like to do before I die is retire. Part of the problem with my job is that you can almost never disconnect from it. That’s probably the one slight regret I have about what I do—it kind of dominates my life.

Benjamin Franklin. I’ve been reading his biography, and he just sounds fascinating. He doesn’t sound like a nice man, but he sounds like a really interesting man.

That’s a horrible question, because, I mean, my current favorite movie is actually Brokeback Mountain .

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Gene Shalit reaches the end on ‘Today’

They were born about a month apart in the spring of 1926, and yet one wouldn’t immediately think of them as classmates.

The loud puckish one whose unruly trademark hair remains suspiciously dark said this week he is stepping off the media platform that amplified his views for 40 years. The stoic one who, with all proper deference to The New York Times , epitomizes the idea of “the old gray lady,” made her debut this week on Facebook to help convey her message.

Queen Elizabeth II are two blips passing in the digital night.

Shalit on Thursday plans to kiss “Today” goodbye, if not forget about tomorrow. His presence already had been reduced of late to two “Critics Corner” segments a month on the long-dominant network morning show that introduced the genre in 1952, around three weeks before the queen’s reign began more than 3,000 miles east of 30 Rockefeller Plaza .

Jim Bell , executive producer of “Today,” said through a spokeswoman. “We salute him for his unprecedented 40-year run on a single television program, a feat unlikely to ever be matched.”

The world is increasingly splintered, making it tough for anyone to be heard above the din very well or for very long.

The British Monarchy Facebook page is a marriage of a great colonial power from one era with one of the colonial powers of today. Once, the sun never set on the British Empire. Today, it seems, if you’re not part of the conversation on Facebook, you’re virtually nowhere, and those entrusted with maintaining and enhancing the queen’s image obviously recognize that.

For what it’s worth, there are quite a few Facebook pages dedicated to Shalit, but there is nothing to indicate that he or anyone associated with him has any connection to them. Shalit’s announcement said he plans to “embrace publishing, radio, the Internet and commercials,” although he has wrapped his arms around publishing, radio and commercials before.

Shalit’s announcement Tuesday said the one-time senior film critic for Look Magazine when there was a Look Magazine was not leaving “Today” in order “to ‘spend more time with his family’ or to ‘pursue other opportunities,'” then quoted him: “It’s enough already. But I just changed my mind, I will pursue other opportunities.”

Of course, this is the same man — a longtime essayist for the NBC Radio network when there was an NBC Radio network — whose official bio notes that Shalit “plans soon to begin starting to work on his next book, ‘Procrastination is a Full Time Job.'” Any day now, no doubt.

Roger Ebert started to have real TV conversations on new releases in the mid-1970s.

Dan Aykroyd that Slate unearthed online Tuesday.

Shalit’s celebrity interviews back in the day, like those of soon-to-depart-CNN Larry King, benefited from the fact that there were a lot fewer celebrity interviews 30 years ago, and NBC could give him more time to work with when viewers had fewer options and were less apt to change channels at the first lull.

Frank Blair , and the clock on the set had no hour hand.

Marty Ryan , the show’s executive producer at the time.

Gumbel wasn’t necessarily wrong, but he’s been gone from “Today” for 13 years and Shalit only now is getting his sendoff. He’s a survivor. Literally. A car ran over Shalit when he was on assignment in Florida in 1994. “To the disappointment of many Hollywood movie producers and directors,” his bio says, “Shalit recovered.”

Queen Elizabeth’s greatest contribution to the commonwealth also being her link to an earlier era.

The new Facebook page already boasts a following of more than 185,000 subjects. Photos reveal various people holding up medals, and some, including the queen, in interesting hats. No embarrassing evidence of Buckingham Palace card games yet.

The 19th century essayist Walter Bagehot wrote that royalty is government “in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.”

The pressure to be interesting, however, isn’t limited to kings and queens.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/ .

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The 10 Most Famous Movie Critics of All Time

Their reviews influenced the minds of moviegoers as well as the box office

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Since the earliest days of cinema, movie critics have played a crucial role in filling seats (or not filling seats) at movie theaters. Countless movie reviews have been published over the decades, but only a select few film critics have become well-known for their work. The following famous movie critics have made a lasting mark on the film industry.

André Bazin

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France's André Bazin was one of the earliest major film critics, having started his career in 1943. He was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma. More important than Bazin's reviews are his extensive writing on film theory, including essays on the importance of realism in cinema that are still widely read by film students.

Judith Crist

Judith Crist was one of the first female film critics to gain widespread recognition from her reviews in the New York Herald Tribune , New York magazine, and TV Guide , as well as her appearances on NBC's The Today Show throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. She was perhaps the first female film critic whose criticism was published widely outside of "female-focused" magazines.

Roger Ebert

Arguably the most famous U.S. film critic of all time, Roger Ebert reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for nearly fifty years. With former television partner Gene Siskel, Ebert popularized the basic "thumb's up" or "thumb's down" rating system. Because of his popularity in both print and on television, a review from Ebert could often make or break a movie's box office chances. He also started his own annual film festival, Ebertfest, which often highlights overlooked movies.

As famous as he was for thoughtful, in-depth film criticism, Ebert is also remembered for his savage and often hilarious negative reviews. His review of the 1994 movie North became famous for its vicious prose, including the lines, "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it."

Pauline Kael

The New Yorker

Pauline Kael began her career as a film critic when the editor of a San Francisco magazine overheard her talking about films with a friend in a coffee shop and offered her a job.

Later as a critic for women's magazine McCall's , Kael became famous for her in-depth analysis, as well as for weaving her personal life and experiences into her reviews. She is also known for giving negative reviews to movies that were otherwise popular favorites, such as her extremely negative assessments of It's a Wonderful Life and The Sound of Music .  

In 1968, Kael became a film critic for The New Yorker , where she regularly championed films that other critics ignored or dismissed. She also gained notoriety for her since-discredited 1971 essay Raising Kane that alleged that Orson Welles wrote very little of the Citizen Kane screenplay.

Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin began his career as a movie critic before he even graduated high school. Published regularly from 1969 to 2014, Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide was one of the most popular film reference guides, containing Martin's short reviews of hundreds of movies. He was also the film critic for the television show Entertainment Tonight for 28 years.

Maltin has since become one of the go-to critics for projects relating to the history of American cinema. He has hosted a variety of television programs about the history of movies.

Andrew Sarris

Longtime Village Voice film critic Andrew Sarris was a strong proponent of the "auteur theory" of cinema, which gives credit to a film's director as its primary author.

Sarris was also known for his book The American Cinema , which ranked filmmakers by their output and generated endless debate among film fans. Sarris was married to fellow Village Voice film critic Molly Haskell.

Gene Shalit

Best known for his unique look—bushy hair, mustache, and ever-present bow-tie—Gene Shalit wrote for a variety of publications before becoming the film critic for NBC's The Today Show , a role he held for 40 years (1970–2010).

Shalit was also a comedy writer who integrated puns into many of his reviews ("When it comes to oddball titles, The Men Who Stare at Goats would be hard to bleat!"). Shalit's puns, physical appearance, and overall jovial attitude have made him a popular subject of fond parody, even after he stepped out of the public eye.

Peter Travers

Longtime Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers is one of the most popular film critics of all timeespecially to Hollywood's publicity and marketing departments.

Travers has a tendency to lavish high praise on many films, which means his words are very frequently quoted on publicity materials like posters, trailers, and advertisements.

That doesn't mean Travers gives everything he sees a good review. He has written eviscerating reviews about otherwise very popular movies like A River Runs Through It , Barbershop and Jackass: Number Two . But if you do see a few quotes on a movie poster or television commercial, there's a good chance one of them originated from Travers.

François Truffaut

Unlike most film critics, France's François Truffaut didn't just review movies—he also made them. After a few years of writing famously tough reviews in the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s, Truffaut put his money where his mouth was and began directing movies, starting with 1959's The 400 Blows . Truffaut proved he knew what he was talking about when The 400 Blows won him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. His 1973 film, Day for Night , won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film .

As a critic, Truffaut is best known for developing the "auteur theory" of cinema. He used Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he published a book-long interview, as an example of an auteur.

Armond White

Armond White has written movie reviews for a variety of publications, including the New York Press and National Review . But rather than famous, many would refer to him as "infamous."

White is best known for giving negative reviews to otherwise nearly universally-acclaimed movies like Incredibles 2 , Get Out , Black Panther , Toy Story 3 , The Shape of Water , and The Florida Project . He is also known for giving positive reviews to otherwise negatively-received films, like The 15:17 to Paris , Justice League , and Transformers: The Last Knight . He has been labeled everything from a "contrarian" to a "troll," with many film fans calling for him to be removed as a Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Yet White's against-the-grain criticism is often valuable, as it inspires thoughtful consideration of what makes his views so different from his fellow critics and moviegoers. 

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Gene Shalit

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“stacked with facts” in the wells’ stacks with gene shalit.

My own memories of Gene Shalit’s movie reviews can be traced back to early mornings before I’d leave for school. The TV would be on in the background and the Today show would transition to the “Critic’s Corner,” where Shalit’s trademark mustache and smirking wit would review the latest blockbuster that week. Every time he used to finish a review my parents would also turn from the TV, look at me quizzically, and exclaim, “I never can tell whether he even likes the movie or not!”

Apparently that sly ambivalent humor carries over into much of Shalit’s oeuvre, since the Moving Image Archive recently discovered Shalit in some of the film and video materials we’d received from the Agency for Instructional Television (AIT). In a previous series of blog posts about the AIT collection, I explained some of the history of these materials   and the many moving image formats that have been processed  as part of a digitization initiative. Recently, a graduate student at Simmons College read these blog posts and alerted us to a collection of AIT 16mm films which were part of a television station’s collection in Vermont which were sent to us to join to the rest of the AIT materials held here. During the processing and inspection of these materials one day, I happened to notice a familiar face in one of the 16mm frames.

But that wasn’t the only detail that looked familiar! Most of AIT’s film collection was transferred to various video formats, which were what the Moving Image Archive received three years ago and were then digitized at Memnon’s digitization facilities over the last two years as part of the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative . Therefore, we were able to watch an already digitized version of “About Trade-Offs,” in which Shalit praises the curriculum design of AIT’s educational programming on economics.

Upon reviewing the clip above, the rest of the Moving Image Archive team believed that those library stacks sure did look an awful lot like the ones at the Wells Library here at Indiana University, which is where our archival work space is located. On the surface it made sense that such a scene could have been shot here, since AIT was based in Bloomington and worked in cooperation with the University audio-visual services. So, we went to investigate.

But even after these initial comparisons no one was able to confirm for sure whether the great movie critic had in fact visited IU. Fortunately, IU’s Bicentennial Archivist Kristin Leaman came to the rescue. Kristin directed our search to a University Archives reference file on Indiana University visitors. The Moving Image Archive staff were able to narrow down the year based on the film’s production and information on the edge of the film print to 1977 and, sure enough, the very first item in the folder for that year was an article in the Daily Herald-Telephone , (what is now the Herald-Times ), covering Shalit’s visit to IU and his time spent on an AIT shoot in the Wells library!

The article not only discusses Shalit’s visit and the use of the IU Library to shoot the scene from the film, but also has Shalit pictured with then dean of the libraries Carl Jackson and Frederick Jauch, director of publications for AIT.

The mystery was solved, though new questions arise. What were the circumstances of Shalit’s visit? Did he have any prior relationship with Indiana University? And what of the actual content of his segment of the program? “But now, unfortunately,” Shalit says at point, “many of these books are collecting dust.” Is this to imply that presence of books in libraries was believed to be obsolete?—as early as 1977? It’s clear from the article above that Shalit was a proponent of libraries, but what sort of library of the future was being imagined by AIT and its proponents?

Our initial curiosity with Shalit and the transplantation of his “Critic’s Corner” into the Wells Library raises these and perhaps many more questions about the history of educational moving image materials, libraries, and their evolution over the past half century. What questions does our little scavenger hunt raise for you? We hope that researchers find similar threads to begin their search for answers about these peculiar pasts as they reemerge in the collections at the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive.

– by Saul Kutnicki

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Carol Channing, Still Delightfully 'Larger Than Life'

Bob Mondello

Carol Channing — who turns 91 on Jan. 31 — appears in the 2010 Gypsy of the Year celebration, an annual salute to Broadway's hardest-working chorus performers. Peter James Zielinski/Entertainment One hide caption

Carol Channing: Larger Than Life

• Director: Dori Berinstein
• Genre: Documentary
• Running Time: 87 minutes

Rated PG for mild thematic elements including brief smoking

Whenever the late New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld sketched Carol Channing — whether picturing her as an indomitable Dolly Levi, swathed in feathers and sequins, or as carbon-crazed Lorelei Lee, eyes sparkling like the diamonds that were that splendid creature's best friends — he always made her appear a creature composed entirely of lipstick, mascara and hairspray.

It says something about both his artistry and hers that Channing has generally come across that way in real life as well — seven decades of Broadway celebrity, lived less as a flesh-and-blood figure than as a fabulously insubstantial cartoon.

Tall, slender, saucer-eyed, toothy, with a vocal rasp that suggests sandpaper being fed through a shredder, she's the one stage star who has never had any trouble living up to her Hirschfeld. That's her talent — and also what's made her a campy fave with female impersonators.

Dori Berinstein's documentary love letter, Carol Channing: Larger than Life, which animates Hirschfeld drawings to make transitions in its bubbly narrative, offers a slight corrective to that image — emphasis on slight.

There's nothing here to surprise the Broadway devotees who will be this film's prime (and possibly only) audience; the nonogenarian Channing that Berinstein puts gently on display is definitely performing Carol Channing for the camera. But she sounds sharp and reasonably canny about the impression she's making.

With photos that show a comparatively delicate-featured young woman morphing into the gaudy starlet who first took Broadway by storm in the revue Lend An Ear, the film traces Channing's career, mixing archival footage of stage triumphs with more personal tribulations.

The latter include a miserable 42-year marriage, a first screen kiss with Clint Eastwood (alas, cut from the film The First Traveling Saleslady ), and a happy reunion after seven decades with childhood sweetheart Harry Kullijian.

Channing and Kullijian (who died after filming was completed) bill and coo like teenagers through a few too many reminiscences of adolescence, but their affection, and their stories, do offer a window on the woman behind the performance.

A Bennington College grad before she made her rep as Broadway's most ebullient trouper, she's hardly the dumb blond she has been playing since her 30s. If you doubt her skill at media manipulation, just watch her in the vintage TV clips Berinstein has dug up, disarming interlocutors — she all but disables a helplessly cackling Gene Shalit — as she launches into showbiz anecdotes replete with accents, impersonations and deftly delivered shtick.

That they're all practiced routines, with punch lines she knows precisely how to land, doesn't reduce their effectiveness a whit. The lady was — and remains — a pro, still glowin', crowin', goin' strong.

Gene Shalit signs off from the 'Today' show

• Updated: Nov. 12, 2010, 4:24 p.m.
• | Published: Nov. 12, 2010, 3:24 p.m.
• Mark Dawidziak, The Plain Dealer

It wasn't exactly a hair-raising announcement. Gene Shalit confirmed this week that there will be no more tomorrows for him on the "Today" show.

Saying "it's enough already," the genial film critic known for his trademark bushy hair, arched eyebrows and massive mustache officially closed out a 40-year run with the NBC morning program. Unofficially, he hadn't really been part of the show for about six months.

You may not have noticed, but there hadn't been a Shalit sighting on "Today" for many a day. His last "Critic's Corner," a review of "Shrek Forever After," was forever ago, in May.

Shalit, 84, was given the TV equivalent of a gold watch -- an on-air retrospective salute -- during Thursday's "Today" show. He didn't show for the fete, which amounted to: Thanks Gene for all the reviews and all the smiles. Time to pack up the colorful bow ties, Coke-bottle glasses and endless assortment of puns.

There were fond memories from, among others, "Today" colleagues Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, Willard Scott, Katie Couric and, yes, even Bryant Gumbel.

There are some, including former "Today" host Gumbel, who criticized the critic, charging Shalit with being a lightweight reviewer and interviewer. Others saw him as more clown than critic.

But while easily impersonated and caricatured, Shalit is not so easily dissed and dismissed. There was more to this celebrity reviewer than just a pair of Groucho glasses fronting an outrageous hairdo and even more outrageous puns.

Shalit was instrumental in changing the balance of critical power in America. When he began his "Today" tenure, newspapers and magazines were the primary sources for movie reviews. That's where cinematic opinion was sparked and shaped.

Partly because of his distinctive appearance, but also because of genuine passion for film, Shalit caught fire with viewers. He demonstrated the possibilities of using a visual medium (television) to discuss a visual medium (film) to a national audience.

Locally, this already had been tried with great success in the New York market, where every station boasting a newscast had a critic reviewing Broadway plays or movies. Another "Today" contributor, Edwin Newman, who died three months ago, started as the drama critic at WNBC Channel 4 in 1965.

The Broadway side of that equation couldn't be taken nationally, but the film side sure was ready for the star treatment. Shalit's reviews soon were being quoted alongside those that ran in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Personality had a lot of do with his popularity, of course. From his perch on the show, Shalit could make a connection that, compared to print, was less involving but often more personal.

Shalit could be the target of jokes, and he was apt to laugh along, but he could not be ignored. That point was conceded when, in 1981, the "Today" program's ABC rival, "Good Morning America," hired Joel Siegel to be its movie critic. Siegel had been the film and theater critic at the CBS station in New York, where he used brief drop-in clips to punctuate his reviews.

With his glasses, mustache and ready smile, Siegel came across like a toned-down body double for Shalit. Three years before Siegel joined "Good Morning America," Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel's local "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" movie-review program, "Sneak Previews," went national on PBS.

As the discussion of film grew more substantial on television, Shalit's court-jester approach seemed less relevant. Still, he stayed on the beat 40 years, seeing television's place as an opinion shaper usurped by another newcomer, the Internet.

Although his reviews may not have run very deep, they had wide influence. A few generations of movie and show-business programs, as well as thousands of websites, should recognize that here is their pioneer, Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses.

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Hardly Working

“Hardly Working” is one of the great non-experiences of my moviegoing life. I was absolutely stunned by the vast stupidity of this film. It was a test of patience and tolerance that a saint might not have passed–but I didn’t walk out. I remained for every single last dismal wretched awful moment. I was keeping a pledge to myself.

Watching the “Today” show in a hotel room in Los Angeles, I saw Jerry Lewis being interviewed by Gene Shalit. Jerry was convinced that the critics had it in for him. He hinted, none too subtly, that the chances were Shalit would dislike the film when he saw it (Shalit claimed not to have seen it already, which was an excellent ploy). In “Variety” I’d read that the critics were barred from the Miami premiere of the film because, and I paraphrase, Jerry Lewis makes films for the masses and critics are unequipped to understand his appeal. Horse manure. “Hardly Working” is one of the worst movies ever to achieve commercial release in this country, and it is no wonder it was on the shelf for two years before it saw the light of day. It is not just a bad film, it is incompetent filmmaking.

Jerry Lewis, as director, has no sense of timing–and timing is the soul of comedy. He leaves people standing onscreen waiting for something to be said. He throws in random, odd pieces of comic business that are inexplicable and not funny. He has made his film into an educational experience: See it, and you will learn by default what competent film editing is.

The plot stars Jerry as a born loser who is fired from his job as a circus clown (and no wonder; the film’s one clown sequence is not even remotely funny). He throws himself on the mercy of his sister and brother-in-law, and then tries his hand at a variety of jobs, including gas station attendant, before finally winding up with the U.S. Postal Service. The movie sets us up for several comic set pieces, none of which deliver. Example: Applying for a job at the gas station, Jerry sneaks up behind the owner, who is making a tall stack of oil cans. Jerry scares him, and the owner tips the cans over. Later, Jerry lets a customer’s gas tank overflow. The owner, nearly finished rebuilding the stack, sees what Jerry is doing and so deliberately knocks over the stack again. Why? That is an excellent question to ask again and again during this movie.

Some scenes are totally inexplicable. These include a conversation Lewis has with himself in drag (it doesn’t even use trick photography, just over-the-shoulder shots with stand-ins wearing wigs); a scene in which he waits for a very long time in a supervisor’s office, to no avail; and several scenes in which he spills things on people. Once, a very long time ago, Jerry Lewis made me laugh. I was seven at the time. He still seems to be making movies for the same audience.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Gene Shalit

Highest Rated: Not Available

Lowest Rated: Not Available

Birthday: Mar 25, 1926

Birthplace: New York, New York, USA

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