Gene Shalit, 'TODAY' show movie critic, dies at 100 [View all]

Source: NBC News

Gene Shalit, the longtime film critic for NBC’s “TODAY” show whose walrus mustache and exuberant wordplay made him one of television’s most recognizable reviewers, died Friday, his family said. He was a fixture on the program for four decades.

…Shalit started as a part-time “TODAY” show contributor in 1970 before moving to a full-time role three years later. He earned national fame as the program’s go-to movie reviewer, offering his take on summer blockbusters, awards contenders and other big-screen projects until his retirement in 2010.

“The ‘TODAY’ show was an extraordinary era for him,” his family said in its statement. He stood out from the broadcast television pack with his colorful bowties and bushy mustache. He often studded his reviews in the “TODAY” show “Critics Corner” with puns and other cheeky turns of phrase, endearing him to millions of viewers.

“‘The Silence of the Lambs’ may be all wool and a yard wide, but it makes a terrific yarn,” he said in his review of the 1991 horror classic, which won best picture at the Academy Awards the following year. He rarely minced words when a movie left him cold. In panning “X-Men,” he said the first entry in the hit superhero franchise “should not be taken seriously. In fact, it should be taken with two aspirin.” Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” is “passable,” he said — “speaking colonically.”


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