# The “awesomely bad” 1988 movie so awful Roger Ebert found it endearing: “I was not bored”

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/the-awesomely-bad-1988-movie-so-awful-roger-ebert-found-it-endearing-i-was-not-bored/
- Published: 2026-11-07T17:45:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-07T18:28:03+00:00
- Original publisher: Far Out
- Original article: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/awesomely-bad-movie-roger-ebert-found-endearing/
- Topics: Entertainment, Film

## Key points

- Ebert gave *Heartbreak Hotel* one star.
- Its unintended laughs made it endearing to him.
- He said he was not bored.

## Summary

Roger Ebert found an unusual charm in *Heartbreak Hotel*, Chris Columbus’s 1988 comedy about a teenager who plans to kidnap Elvis Presley to help his mother recover from a car crash. Though Ebert judged it a failure, its awkwardness and unintended humour kept him watching and eventually made him fond of it.

Ebert called the film “awesomely bad” and gave it one star, while saying he was not bored. He described its many different kinds of badness as endearing, suggesting that the film’s appeal came from how thoroughly it missed its apparent intentions rather than from deliberate camp.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.