Review Roundup: Ian McKellen Stars In New Film THE CRITIC

Critics have stopped by The Critic, the dark and sharp-witted new thriller starring stage and screen icon, Ian McKellen. Read the reviews!

The film features an all-star British cast including McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai and Lesley Manville.

According to the synopsis, "When the most feared and vicious theatre critic in town Jimmy Erskine (McKellen), finds himself suddenly in the cross hairs of the Daily Chronicle’s new owner David Brooke (Strong), he strikes a sinister Faustian pact with struggling actress Nina Land (Arterton) who is desperate to win his favour."

The film is directed by Anand Tucker, with a screenplay by Patrick Marber.

The Critic made its world debut at TIFF in 2023 and is set to hit British cinemas on September 14, 2024. A US release date has not yet been confirmed.

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The New York Times, Ben Kenigsburg: Visually, “The Critic” is polished enough, despite some splashes of apparent digital lacquer. But Marber hasn’t supplied an incontrovertible motive to bind Nina to Jimmy. And there is something arguably troubling about the way McKellen’s character has been conceived. The subtext seems to be that Jimmy’s familiarity with operating in the shadows and having his liaisons genteelly wielded against him has given him a special aptitude for extortion. But as a gay man in an era when Britain criminalized homosexual activity, he would, one assumes, be far more likely to be a victim of blackmail than its perpetrator.

Ty Burr, The Washington Post: At 85, Ian McKellen doesn’t have many performances left in him, so any movie that lets the actor carve ham with such exuberant relish as “The Critic” is worth his time and ours. Anand Tucker’s British drama isn’t great art, but it is a good time, one that darkens steadily and satisfyingly as it goes.

Dan Rubins, Slant Magazine: Whenever the film lets the critic do his criticizing, though, McKellen is a wicked delight. His wide-eyed grimaces and low groans also communicate how high the stakes are for Jimmy every opening night. His is the aching pain of a man who loves good storytelling, a pain triggered most profoundly by those works of art that fail to live up to their potential. It’s a familiar feeling.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: It’s a strange adaptation in some ways: Marber changes Quinn’s original plot, keeping the characters but removing a storyline about a serial killer, and reassigning the villainy — on a less obviously violent level — elsewhere. He actually makes Erskine much nastier than in the book, removing much of the lovability from the lovable monster. Yet the film has an odd teatime glow of cosy-crime sentimentality which deadens the effect, and this period drama can’t quite bring itself to show that, in the 1930s, murder was punishable by death. But McKellen overrides these concerns; his glorious star quality and dash make him the only possible casting. His importance is critical.

Donald Clarke, Irish Times: There are strong characters and crafty performances here. One might assume the aristocratic owner of a right-wing paper to be a bad ’un, but Strong, always an actor to find unexpected angles in a role, draws poignancy from a love-torn introvert trying to make something less ghastly of his father’s legacy. Arterton is perfectly cast as a strong women glued down by one critic’s too-enthusiastic taste for the jugular. “It’s going to stop!” she says on encountering Erskine. “Oooo! Are you retiring?” he throws back with much faux enthusiasm. Unfortunately there are too many clunky period signifiers – the British Union of Fascists pins on police officers’ lapels, for instance – and, late on, a fatal surrender to penny-dreadful improbabilities. For a large part of the yarn, Erskine does, at least, seem to exercise professional integrity, but, given the slightest opportunity to sell himself out, he does so without an apparent qualm. That makes him a significantly less interesting personality. By the close, one is left befuddled. Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy? Is it a moral fable? Cruelty to Homo criticus is the least of its problems.

Hilary White, Irish Independent: Anand Tucker directs this loose adaptation of the Anthony Quinn novel with a good eye for the era, but not quite enough vim or sweep to distinguish it from a lavish TV drama special.

Kimberly Jones, Austin Chronicle: McKellen – now in his mid-Eighties, still sporting – hasn’t brought this kind of twinkling malevolence to the screen since his starring role in 1995’s Richard III, which coincidentally transposed its story of power grabbing and backstabbing to 1930s, fascists-rising England, the very same milieu of this acidic drama. Screenwriter Patrick Marber (Closer) loosely adapted the script from Anthony Quinn’s popular thriller Curtain Call (from what I gather, whole chunks of the original story have been chucked to shift the focus to the titular critic); he and director Anand Tucker (Red Riding: 1983, Hilary and Jackie) have a crafted a mostly effective thriller with a lot of meat on the bone. 

Victoria Luxford, City A.M.:The Critic is stuffed with plot twists and underused characters (it’s a crime that we see so little of Lesley Manville as Land’s mother). Nevertheless, it’s a deliciously wicked 100 minutes that will get rave reviews from those who want to see the dark side of a national treasure. 

Lindsey Bahr, Darien Times: There are some fun ideas here, and good performances. McKellen is having a wonderful time living inside this charismatic monster who you are with until you’re really not. Erskine is also gay; an open secret that becomes a liability with his new boss and the rise of fascist thought around him. But none of it really adds up to anything poignant or enormously entertaining; its darkness is both lopsided and superficial, as most become casualties of Erskine’s aims. Theater critic as tyrant is a juicy premise; “The Critic” just can’t live up to the promise.

Linda Marric, HeyUGuys: While The Critic benefits from Anand Tucker’s confident direction, the film is ultimately let down by a screenplay that struggles to find its footing. Tucker, who previously directed Hilary and Jackie and Leap Year, brings a meticulous eye to the film’s period detail and atmosphere. The first half of the film, with its biting wit and clever satire of the theatrical world, is hugely enjoyable. McKellen shines in these moments, relishing the role of a merciless critic who thrives on his own venomous prose.

John Nathan, The Jewish Chronicle: In this seedy, sepia vision of 1930s London gracefully directed by Anand Tucker, McKellen’s Erskine is the delicious embodiment of cruelty and wit in ways that make you wonder if it’s possible to have one without the other.

Richard Crouse, Richard Crouse: It’s a marvelous scene, sleek and caustic, that sets a tone that is, unfortunately, not continued throughout, despite the good performances. McKellen and Company are let down by a script that, time after time, falls for its basest impulses. Every dark turn, and there are many of them, pushes the story deeper into melodrama at the expense of interesting exchanges like the one detailed above. “The Critic” slides by on the work of McKellen, Arterton, Strong and Lesley Manville, but doesn’t know how to use their performances to the story’s best advantage.

John Byrne, RTE: The story rattles along after a slightly sluggish start and, despite only crumbs of character development and the odd dubious plot twist, it's an enjoyably cynical tale that's well told.

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