Negative review

Ebert really didn't like The Village.

Eventually the secret ... is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

I have noticed that if Ebert merely dislikes a movie, his review is relatively brief and straightforward. But if the picture actually arouses his ire, the review becomes longer, more eloquent, and funnier. My quote is but a small sample of what he has to offer on this subject.