When it comes to dramatizing critics on films, they are often treated as negative figures, as a way for filmmakers to retaliate against those who gave bad reviews to their works. Perhaps the most obvious example is in M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, in which Bob Balaban played an abrasive film critic and is so loathsome, he gets mauled by one of the film’s monsters. Considering that this whole attack towards criticism, represented as a film dramatization is ridiculous, if you are going to lean into it, play it up and have fun, which is what Sir Ian McKellen has done in The Critic.
Set in 1934 London, The Critic sees McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, a long-time theater critic who relishes his power to make or break a performer or a production, and the way his position makes him the center of attention. However, when he is targeted by his paper’s new editor (Mark Strong) who takes issue with Jimmy’s writing, especially towards criticizing the performances of theater actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), Erskine is not going to censor himself and will deceit those who will trample his reputation.
While bad reviews have never really damaged movies – otherwise Michael Bay’s Transformers series would not have been the billion-dollar success – theater criticism is this interesting field that can make or break a production. On the one hand, you have Jimmy Erskine who has made a name for himself in his profession that on the other hand, you have Nina Land who actually reveres Erskine despite being heavily criticized in his reviews. What starts off as a confrontation between actor and critic, slowly becoming oddly friendly, which leaves an impact for both of them, only for outside forces to intervene.
Loosely based on the 2015 novel Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn, who worked as a film critic for the British newspaper The Independent, The Critic shifts from the source material’s narrative about a serial killer and make the title character as the chief antagonist who is pulling the strings. What’s disappointing is that the first half has compelling ideas, from the aforementioned relationship between Jimmy and Nina, to the power-play between him and Mark Strong’s editor, who is determined to make his publication Britain’s foremost “family newspaper”. And with the period setting, where being queer was against the law and the British Union of Fascists was ongoing at the time, which makes Jimmy and his young, Black secretary Tom (Alfred Enoch) targets.
Sadly, whatever political intrigue there is in Patrick Marber’s screenplay, gets lost with an incredible British cast that also includes Lesley Manville, Romola Garai and Ben Barnes are thrown into a convoluted plot that is not far off from an episode of Murder, She Wrote. With a plot that is so scattershot in how it tries to connect everyone into this web of conspiracy, The Critic is worth watching solely for Ian McKellen, who is no stranger to playing villainy, revels in pantomime fashion as the reserved but conniving critic that is more nuanced than the thinly-developed supporting cast.
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