Here’s a good article to read, Roger Ebert’s review of Blue Velvet. But it’s not his original review that they print in all his books, it’s a second (but still negative ) review that he wrote after interviewing the great David Lynch.
He doesn’t say so explicitly but it’s pretty obvious that this is his first sit down with Lynch and Ebert seems disarmed by Lynch’s own peculiar brand of being David Lynch. Of course we have the virtue of hindsight but imagine meeting David Lynch and not knowing what to expect.

Ebert is a great film reviewer but he has a natural gift of missing the point (see his review of the matrix. read that review and tell me he understood what that film was about). I understand that reasonable people can disagree about great films. No matter how great a film is it’s value is ultimately subject; I get that but after reading his two reviews I’m confident in saying that Ebert just doesn’t get this movie.
I think this second review explains a lot about Ebert’s problem with the film:

in ‘Blue Velvet,’ there are some scenes in which a woman is degraded and humiliated and made to suffer obscenely, and other scenes in which we’re supposed to giggle because the call letters of the local station are WOOD, and they give the time “at the sound of the falling tree.” Sorry, but I just couldn’t get my lips to smile.

I suppose I can see why one might confuse Blue Velvet for a spoof of some kind. Lynch approaches life from a slightly askew angle that grants even the most serious and deadpan scenario an aura of absurdity. Also there’s undeniably an element of humor to everything he does; but Lynch is the definition of sincere and he never descends into parody or mockery. What Ebert mistakes for parody is actually a very strange man’s idea of what normal people do behind closed doors.

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