Siskel & Ebert (TV Series)

Last Rites/Oliver & Co./The Land Before Time/Far North/Child's Play (1988)

Roger Ebert: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Gene Siskel - Host : [reviewing "Oliver & Company"]  Little Oliver's story gets sidetracked in a film that, I think, is too convoluted in story and too calculated in its attempt to play to different age groups: The Billy Joel and Bette Midler crowd, as well as little kids as well. A more simple story would've been better.

  Roger Ebert - Host : I don't think it's really meant to appeal to the Midler and uh, Billy, uh, Joel crowd, because I'm not sure that people, when they go to animated movies even think...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Of who's singing?

  Roger Ebert - Host : ...About who the voices are.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Well, you know what they do? They put it in the front, it's a personal thing that I don't happen to like. I don't wanna know who the voices are. I don't know who the people- who the dwarfs were, who Snow White was.

  Roger Ebert - Host : And you don't care.

  Gene Siskel - Host : When they're celebrities, it, it loses...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yeah, but that's something, they used to have anonymous voice over artists, now they have famous people. I tell ya, I like this movie a little bit better than you did. It's marginal. I guess I give it a thumb up. It's not one of the great classic, uh, animated films. And one thing that DID bother me, so I don't sound that enthusiastic, why are these stories ALWAYS about little childlike figures who are abandoned and orphaned and, uh, left...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yeah, that's the story of it, they get...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Doesn't that kind of depress kids? Couldn't there be a happy kid that a movie could be about, y'know?

  Gene Siskel - Host : I would think, I would be nice. I didn't like seeing the kid have, uh, his hand put in a, a window or seeing somebody have their...

  Roger Ebert - Host : Yeah, there was a scene where the electric window goes up in the car, and somebody gets strangled. That's not necessarily the sort of thing children should be learning from animated films.

  Gene Siskel - Host : Yeah, it's one thing when you're talking about swords and dragons, which they're not gonna encounter each day, but they're gonna play around with electric windows. I didn't care for the film. You did?

  Roger Ebert - Host : I gave it a marginal...

  Gene Siskel - Host : Why are you recommending it?

  Roger Ebert - Host : It was harmless, it was inoffensive, there were some moments that were funny, I liked the little Mexican chihuahua.

  Gene Siskel - Host : The chihuahua- they should make the film...

  Roger Ebert - Host : The animation looked good, uh, I don't know.

  Gene Siskel - Host : [chuckles]  Make the film about the chihuahua.

  Roger Ebert - Host : The thumb is just like this,

  [Roger holds thumb sideways; Gene slaps his hand down] 

  Roger Ebert - Host : and that's where it stays.