Roger Ebert, You Are Old, But Funny

For some time, I have been a fan of Roger Ebert's movie reviews. I think he generally gives the movies he sees a fair shot and writes in an honest and engaging way about them. And one thing I've especially enjoyed are the captions he puts beneath the movie photos at the beginning of his reviews.

Observe: In his recent review of The Dukes of Hazzard, we see the following caption:


Jessica Simpson, Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott wear clothing in a scene from "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Or another of my favorites:


Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher simulate an emotion similar to love in "A Lot Like Love."

Seriously, who writes these? Do you think Mr. Ebert does them himself? The reason I like them is that critics generally just go with the default blurb as a photo caption, but Ebert makes the effort to come up with something clever. And at most newspapers there is probably some grump whose job it is to make sure that nothing goofy like this will ever get published, because it is not the mark of a "serious" publication. But seriously. These are funny.

There really are a whole bunch of them, and I think if you went and searched through the archives, you could probably find a bunch that were really funny.

Here are some more that I've noticed:


Angelina Jolie and Colin Farrell looking a bit uncomfy in Oliver Stone's sword-and-sandals epic "Alexander."


Steam is created from nothing more than heated water in "Steamboy."

I love that the humor is subtle, too. It's not like "HA HA HA LOOK AT STUPID COLIN FARRELL LOL!!!" or anything. This kind of thing just cracks me up. Thank you, Roger Ebert, and may you live one thousand years and write one hundred million more photo captions. You have made the world a happier place.