The article revisits Roger Ebert’s unusually strong reaction to *Jonathan Livingston Seagull*, a film he considered so poor that he left before it ended. It presents the walkout as notable because Ebert generally stayed through bad films in order to review them properly, making his response a measure of how profoundly the film failed for him.

Released in 1973 and adapted from Richard Bach’s bestselling novella, the film follows a seagull pursuing self-improvement and nonconformity. Ebert left after about 45 minutes, criticising its pretensions and its treatment of real birds; he later described it as a particularly hollow attempt at metaphysical storytelling. The article places it among the small number of films he publicly said he could not endure.