A soulless theater critic in an age that valued arts writers

By M. Faust

The new British film The Critic stars Ian McKellen as a contumelious London theater reviewer. If that doesn’t whet your appetite, stop reading now. 

After 40 years as the top theater critic for the Daily Guardian, Jimmy Erskine is equally contemptuous of both the actors he judges and the readers he writes for, the kind of smarmy jerk who would use a word like “contumelious” with full knowledge that few of his readers would recognize it (it means “insolently abusive,” which of course you all knew, right?). When his editor objects to the term “steatopygous form” Jimmy agrees to change it to “fat-arsed.” 

Jimmy stopped caring about the theater years ago. When asked, “I hear you enjoy theater?” he responds, “I do not enjoy theater. I am the chief drama critic of the Daily Chronicle.” What he actually loves is the world of the theater and the privileges it offers him: free meals and drinks at the best restaurants, opening night parties, a pass for his open homosexuality (at the time an imprisonable offense in England), and of course the fearful respect of everyone in the theater community. 

But things are about to change for Jimmy. When the paper’s aristocratic owner dies, it falls under the control of his son David (Mark Strong, unrecognizable with a full head of hair), a new broom looking to sweep clean. David is a decent, well-liked fellow, so when Jimmy decides that blackmail is the only way to save his job, he has to invent something with which to threaten his new employer. 

The Critic was adapted from the best-selling (in England, anyway) novel Curtain Call, written by a former film reviewer named Anthony Quinn. On the basis of what made it to the screen, it would seem that screenwriter Patrick Marber and director Anand Tucker decide to focus on the plot at the expense of the characters and their motivations. A small group of characters is connected in unlikely ways, connections that far too often are realized in flashes of implausible revelation (you can get away with that kind of thing once or twice in a movie at best). 

The result is a story that seems designed to play as high tragedy but mostly gets tied up in plot machinations. The players (also including Gemma Arterton, Ben Barnes, Romola Garai, Lesley Manville and Claire Skinner) are all first-rate but lack anything to bring sufficient depth to their characters.

The production is strong and the photography alluring, maybe a bit too pretty for what is supposed to be a seedy milleu. The film is set in 1934, a time when many Brits feared their country would fall to fascism, alluded to only in passing. Likewise, there’s little sense of the real danger Jimmy’s homosexuality posed outside of the theater community.

Viewers who buy a ticket for The Critic to watch McKellen, who is now in his mid-80s, chew up the scenery won’t be wholly disappointed. The movie does keep you engaged up to the end, but you’re likely to walk away wishing there had been more there there. 

M. Faust is a longtime film critic and a contributor to The Buffalo Hive.