10 Spectacularly Wrong Movie Reviews

4. Same For Blue Velvet

Ebert and his cabal of critics are equal opportunity offenders, mind. They were similarly disenchanted with a similarly cult classic film, David Lynch's dark and perverse Blue Velvet. A surreal, nightmarish commentary on small-town American values and the darkness that lies beneath it (symbolised by the creeping insects that crawl beneath the white picket fences glimpsed at the film's start), the film follows the director's typical dream logic, with inexplicable plot twists and some troubling sexuality. By which we mean Dennis Hopper playing a gas-huffing mobster psychopath who blackmails Isabella Rossellini into have gross, kinky intercourse with her, where he pretends to be a baby. Yep. Pretty messed up.

Now, Blue Velvet has its rightful place at the top of modern American films, a strikingly unique and disturbing drama. Not so much on its 1986 release. Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post said that Lynch "isn't interested in communicating, he's interested in parading his personality. The movie doesn't progress or deepen, it just gets weirder, and to no good end." A major contingent was openly hostile towards the film as a whole, including Ebert, who would later admit he likes Lynch as a director but stands by his initial assessment that Blue Velvet has "a story that's marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots", that the varying tone "is like the guy who drives you nuts by hinting at horrifying news and then saying, 'Never mind'", and that that was offensive towards Rossellini, who deserved "putting her in an important film."