“If you read between the lines, it’s not that bad."

Said Rob Reiner after reading Roger Ebert's famous "Hated It" review out loud, for laughs:

It's a funny punchline, reminiscent of "Dumb and Dumber"'s "So you're telling me, there's a chance?"

But what was it that bothered Ebert so much about Reiner's movie, "North"?

Here's more of Ebert's review:

[The main character is] a kid with inattentive parents, who decides to go into court, free himself of them, and go on a worldwide search for nicer parents. This idea is deeply flawed. Children do not lightly separate from their parents – and certainly not on the evidence provided here, where the great parental sin is not paying attention to their kid at the dinner table. The parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander) have provided little North with what looks like a million-dollar house in a Frank Capra neighborhood, all on dad’s salary as a pants inspector. And, yes, I know that is supposed to be a fantasy, but the pants-inspecting jokes are only the first of several truly awful episodes in this film.

North goes into court, where the judge is Alan Arkin.... North’s case hits the headlines, and since he is such an all-star overachiever, offers pour in from would-be parents all over the world, leading to an odyssey that takes him to Texas, Hawaii, Alaska, and elsewhere.... I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it....

Wikipedia says Ebert later said (to Siskel): 

I hated this movie as much as any movie we have ever reviewed in the 19 years we've been doing this show. I hated it because of the premise, which seems shockingly cold-hearted, and because this premise is being suggested to kids as children's entertainment, and because everybody in the movie was vulgar and stupid, and because the jokes weren't funny, and because most of the characters were obnoxious, and because of the phony attempt to add a little pseudo-hip philosophy with the Bruce Willis character. 

Siskel added, "I think you gotta hold Rob Reiner's feet to the fire here. I mean, he's the guy in charge... he's saying this is entertainment... it's deplorable. There isn't a gag that works. You couldn't write worse jokes if I told you to write worse jokes. The ethnic stereotyping is appalling... it's embarrassing... you feel unclean as you're sitting there. It's junk. First-class junk!" and finished his statement with "Any subject could be done well; this is just trash, Roger." Ebert's future co-host on Ebert and Roeper, Richard Roeper, would later go on to list North as one of the 40 worst movies he's ever seen, stating: "Of all the films on this list, North may be the most difficult to watch from start to finish. I've tried twice and failed. Do yourself a favor and don't even bother. Life is too short."

Here's the trailer in case you want to get a sense of what bothered these men — Ebert, Siskel, Roeper — so much:

It seems to be a very obvious kid fantasy — replacing your own parents with better parents, parents who would really understand and appreciate you. But somehow that innocent, petulant wish can be presented in a way that is radically and intolerably offensive. One would have to watch the apparently unwatchable movie to try to find out exactly how, and it's not as though it contains the answer to the question why the the former kid, Nick Reiner, found his own parents so objectionable that he knifed them to death. Perhaps "North" couldn't find an audience because we don't identify with a boy who turns his back on a good-enough real family, and we don't want to see a world full of childless couples step up and beg for the privilege of becoming this entitled boy's new parents. The empathy with the boy goes too far, extravagantly too far, and there is no reason to consider the possibility that the boy could be better off after this fantastical journey.