Quotes
Last Rites/Oliver & Co./The Land Before Time/Far North/Child's Play
Siskel & Ebert & the Movies
- 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.
- Gene Siskel - Host: [during the recap segment] A split decision on "Oliver & Company", although Roger has yet to fully explain why he liked the animated movie.