Any movie that features a theater critic as a main character invites more intentional criticism from even lay viewers through the mere recognition that the filmmakers are, in fact, actively cognizant about criticism as a practice and the importance of criticism in representing a baseline of intellectually engaged citizenry. It’s a meta-choice that draws attention to the meta part. Criticism is a practice more than a career or a special task that only some do. (And not all critics are actually critical, but that’s a discussion for another day.) To have a critic power an entire film, as is this case with Anand Tucker’s latest work The Critic, is a dangerous gamble. And it’s one that The Critic loses, too, by making no wise artistic observations but still drawing attention to the importance of such observations through its titular critic, lacking fulfilling characters, and having the audacity to call itself a thriller without ever managing to thrill. To quote the wise Gertrude Stein’s now ubiquitous phrase, “There is no there there.”
The critic here is more of a pompous and insufferable caricature than a thoughtful engager of dramatic media, though Ian McKellen as Jimmy Erskine does look like the kind of older newspaperman that one rarely and seldomly can still come across at a (film) critic screening in a major city — a drink of liquor near, well-read, keenly and not humbly aware of his fortunate occupation, and, as such, a relic of a bygone time. The position of “Chief Drama Critic” might also be extinct, a key indication of the film’s setting in the 1930s. Oh, and he’s gay. The gay (or effete) theater person is another overused trope in both cinema and literature, even if it’s relieving that Jimmy’s queerness here is actually important to the story rather than simply present in order to conform to reductive public perception for a person who appreciates the theater. The glimpse we do get into his adjective-stringing, insult-heavy criticism is flattening and deaf. To add to the mess, he’s also lazy — more interested in a good drink than a good play, a tendency to depend on his secretary, etc. — and this may or may not be revealing of Tucker’s personal feelings toward critics (who have been neither excessively generous nor egregiously antagonistic in their reviews of his directorial work). A filmmaker with a dislike of critics? Boy, how have we never seen that before…
Fascists lurk on the streets of 1930s England, and the Jimmy’s encounters predictively don’t go well. Caught committing an “indecent” act, he loses his job and is close to losing a lot more, which creates a domino effect that leads to him casting the local actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton) to help him swindle the paper’s new scion David Brooke (Mark Strong) as he slumps confusedly into an etiolated psychological breakdown in a last grasp for power over his own life. But The Critic loses the viewers as soon as it loses its levity, and that’s a shame because the destructive turn that Jimmy’s life takes following his encounter with the cultural fascists initially holds politically perceptive potential. The film quickens into a more serious picture unceremoniously and gracelessly; it’s as if there were two distinct films here, and Tucker happened to pick the lesser one to run with. And so, any early potential never rises above that: potential. There is only one earnest encounter with the fascists, and any complicity that Jimmy may have through his job, at a conservative paper, or reflection on his function must not have made it through the final draft of the screenplay.
More than a few scenes also distract with their patchy cohesion. The first meeting between Jimmy and Nina might be the worst example. Arterton breaks into tears in no time, mumbling something about how Jimmy’s writing drove her to the stage in the first place and that she’s been longing for his approval for years. Her personal history only comes across through dialogue, it details and textures never felt in McKellen’s performance. This might not be Arterton’s fault, though. The encounter feels like a truncated trailer for a longer version of this sequence, one that also didn’t make it to the final version of The Critic, either shortened in the editing room or cut into a leaner scene somewhere earlier in the process. Whatever the case, the final version does a disservice to Arterton’s acting chops. At the very least, this scene should have been a lot more nutritious, setting up a fuller base for her relationship with Jimmy; instead, it ruins their chemistry as much as your garden variety shitty first date.
We’re left with, then, a film that doesn’t provide any thoughtful substance, isn’t entertaining in any real way, and relies on a (non-romantic) relationship between Jimmy and Nina that’s about as unearned as any in recent cinema. Nina’s relationships all have a plastic quality to them, and Tom Turner (Alfred Enoch) takes up nothing but empty air in execution. Even the film’s two big scenes, a suicide and a murder, could hardly leave a weaker or more unmemorable impression. The images too are of the junk-food variety: they look well enough to pass for contemporary cinema, but they ultimately offer nothing of value for the consumer. The small mercy left to viewers is that it seems The Critic is destined to come and go just like the death of the drama critic: quickly, quietly, and without a fuss.
DIRECTOR: Anand Tucker; CAST: Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mak Strong, Lesley Manville; DISTRIBUTOR: Greenwich Entertainment; IN THEATERS: September 13; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 34 min.
