Friday, January 10, 2003

A Lapse In Taste


In my research for the below post, I was shocked to find that the redoubtable Roger Ebert gives Uncle Buck a paltry one-and-a-half stars. Roger mutters about the "wrong notes" that Hughes strikes, and the movie's "uncomfortable undercurrent," using words like mean-spirited and uneasy and even creepy. I'm stunned to see the Big Man so completely missing the point: the darkness of the film is what makes it a classic, instead of Yet Another Entry in the "Lovable Loser Learns To Love ... Again" subgenre.

Because the thing about Lovable Losers is that they are still, in the end, losers—and thus, creepy.

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