The arts rarely have anything good to say about critics. That they are generally not the hero of many stories is at least understandable. More often they are depicted as joyless, cruel and a bit pathetic; themselves failed artists who live to bring others down, or worse, sycophants looking for a famous friend.
Without getting into any philosophical or even factual debate about the nature of the kind of person who is attracted to criticism (aside perhaps from a fervent antipathy to job security or the accumulation of wealth), it is safe to say that the drama critic of ‘ The Critic’ takes all the worst stereotypes to hysterical heights.
Set in 1930s London, Ian McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, a veteran theater critic whose reviews can make or break a play or an artist. He has a monastic commitment to telling the truth, as entertainingly as he can, and knows what he must sacrifice to do so.
“The drama critic is feared and reviled for the judgment he must make,” says McKellen in an ominous voiceover. “(He) must be cold and completely alone.”
When a woman dares to chat with him after a play and offers her a look at the material and performances, he quickly tries to have her removed from the restaurant, claiming that he needs to be protected from the general public. When an actress, Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), confronts him about his wildly inconsistent criticism of her (how can she be both chubby and emaciated, she wonders), he refuses to apologize. And he laughs when the paper’s new boss, David Brooke (Mark Strong), begs him to slow down: “Be nicer,” he says. “More beauty, less beast.”
But what starts as satire turns into an enormously messy tragedy, with fabrication after fabrication. This is a film that could have listened to its antihero’s advice to the flailing actress: do less. That someone as great as Lesley Manville, as Nina’s mother, only gets to see a handful of scenes and has only minimal consequence to them is telling. It strives to be an intricate spider web of compelling, intersecting stories, but few characters are fleshed out enough to make us care.
“The Critic,” beautifully directed by Anand Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie,” “Leap Year”) and written by Patrick Marber (“Closer,” “Notes on a Scandal”), is very loosely based on Anthony Quinn’s novel “Curtain Call,” itself more of a murder mystery than this ever allows itself to be. Instead, the film is about the desperate lengths a man will go to when his job and freedom are threatened. Erskine is the kind of gentleman critic whose power and authority have gone unchallenged for so long that he has become delusional beyond recognition. However, his words do not only destroy. They also inspired. Even the actress he repeatedly erases admits as much: she tells him it was his writing that made her fall in love with the theater.
There are some nice ideas and good executions here. McKellen has a great time living this charismatic monster you’re with until you really aren’t. Erskine is also gay; an open secret that becomes a problem with his new boss and the rise of fascist thinking around him. But none of it really delivers on anything gripping or hugely entertaining; the darkness is both skewed and shallow, as most become victims of Erskine’s objectives. Theater critic as tyrant is a juicy premise; “The Critic” just can’t deliver on the promise.
“The Critic,” a Greenwich Entertainment release in select theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “some language and sexual content.” Playing time: 100 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
