I never understood how Ebert became so popular. I remember (years ago) when he lambasted Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke", thinking that he just didn't get it.

I never understood how Ebert became so popular. I remember (years ago) when he lambasted Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke", thinking that he just didn't get it. The movie was about two stoners in a van making stoner jokes for a stoner audience. That's what it set out to do, and that's what it did. You can't properly critique a movie without taking in context what the goal was - something he consistently failed to do.