Does Ebert's Thumb Still Matter?

Over the weekend I read about the fracas caused over Roger Ebert's thumb. Basically, Ebert & Gene Siskel's family own rights to the "Thumbs Up/Thumps Down" trademark. Ebert has been willing to sell his ownership of the trademark to Disney (which distributes At The Movies with Ebert & Roeper). He balked at the offer Disney made and counter-offered. Disney then gave him the middle finger up and removed the entire trademark from the TV show.

This begs the question ... is the thumb important? In a word, yes.

First of all our thumbs are important in the general sense. Hitchikers need them, for example. I need them too. I use my right thumb to hit the spacebar while typing. So far, I've used my right thumb well over 100 times in this article alone. I used to suck on my thumb as a kid and thought my mother was insane when she ordered me to break the habit. Thing is, I was a thumb wrestling champ back in my day and I credit my sucked-on, swollen thumb for those celebrated moments before Phonics. She was murdering my street cred, see?

Ebert's opposable thumb has been enormously important in film criticism. What he doth, he doth by rule of thumb. Love it or hate it, Siskel & Ebert's use of the thumb skipped through all the intellectual vomit of a film review and told the viewers point blank whether or not they should go see the movie.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I will admit that the thumbs up/thumbs down formula doesn't work for me as a movie buff. I'd probably rather see a thumbs down movie that is said to be bold but "misses its mark" than a soft thumbs up film that is said to be formulaic but "you know what you're getting." I happen to like reading film reviews, especially Roger Ebert's. Sometimes a movie can't be decided by pointing your thumb north or south.

But for years Siskel & Ebert did a pretty good job letting viewers know when they felt bad about giving a movie the thumbs down or if they were hesitant giving a movie the thumbs up. Now, that doesn't much work in print, but you need only read their printed reviews to get a better understanding of where they were coming from.

Mr. Ebert, I see only one resolution: sell your thumbs trademark to me. I already have two thumbs so I don't need the extra baggage in the form of Richard Roeper. I've been really working on the weight and believe I can eclipse Ebert's poundage by 2011. Plus, I'll go back into thumb wrestling training and be able to institute the "Big Thumb" verdict for those extra special movies. We're talking "Big Thumb" T-Shirts, "Big Thumb" coffee mugs, "Big Thumb" bobble-heads, you name it. So what do you say, Rog? North or south?

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Dre writes three times a week for Film.com. He has thumb-envy. E-mail him!

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