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On Thursday, legendary film critic Roger Ebert died at 70. USA TODAY Sports remembers Ebert by looking back at some of his most memorable sports film reviews.
Hoosiers (4 stars) — “I was a sportswriter once for a couple of years in Downstate Illinois. I covered mostly high school sports, and if I were a sportswriter again, I’d want to cover them again. There is a passion to high school sports that transcends anything that comes afterward; nothing in pro sports equals the intensity of a really important high school basketball game. Hoosiers knows that.”
Rudy (3.5 stars) — “Underdog movies are a durable genre and never go out of style. They’re fairly predictable, in the sense that few movie underdogs ever lose in the big last scene. The notion is enormously appealing, however, because everyone can identify in one way or another.”
FAMED CRITIC:Roger Ebert, 70, dies
Kazaam (1.5 stars) — “As for Shaquille O’Neal, given his own three wishes the next time, he should go for a script, a director, and an interesting character.”
Rookie of the Year (3 stars) — “Look, this isn’t a great movie. If you’re not a kid, don’t go unless there’s a kid you want to take. But if you are a kid, and you have ever for a moment wondered what it would be like to play major-league ball at your age, then take it from the old Little Leaguer and see this movie. I really shouldn’t give it three stars, but I’m going to anyway. Call it a form of revenge for all those hours of dread I spent in right field.”
Caddyshack (2.5 stars) — “Caddyshack never finds a consistent comic note of its own, but it plays host to all sorts of approaches from its stars, who sometimes hardly seem to be occupying the same movie. There’s Bill Murray’s self-absorbed craziness, Chevy Chase’s laid-back bemusement, and Ted Knight’s s apoplectic overplaying. And then there is Rodney Dangerfield, who wades into the movie and cleans up.”
The Babe (1 star) — “Say it ain’t so Babe. Say you weren’t a sad, tortured person who just happened to be able to slam homers out of the park better than anyone else. Say this movie is all a lie and that you were indeed a glorious American hero, the grandest of all the boys of summer, and that it was great fun, at least sometimes, to be the most famous baseball hero of all time. Let us believe. We need our heroes.”
Rocky (4 stars) — “What makes the movie extraordinary is that it doesn’t try to surprise us with an original plot, with twists and complications; it wants to involve us on an elemental, a sometimes savage, level. It’s about heroism and realizing your potential, about taking your best shot and sticking by your girl. It sounds not only clichéd but corny — and yet it’s not, not a bit, because it really does work on those levels. It involves us emotionally, it makes us commit ourselves: We find, maybe to our surprise after remaining detached during so many movies, that this time we care.”
Cool Runnings (2.5 stars) — “If you like underdog movies, you might like this one. Especially if you haven’t seen very many.”
The Sandlot (3 stars) — “These days too many children’s movies are infected by the virus of Winning, as if kids are nothing more than underage pro athletes, and the values of Vince Lombardi prevail: It’s not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose. This is a movie that breaks with that tradition, that allows its kids to be kids, that shows them in the insular world of imagination and dreaming that children create entirely apart from adult domains and values. “