In the enjoyable Argentine comedy The Film Critic (El Critico), we meet a glum and judgmental movie critic (Rafael Spregelburd). He’s proud of having not written a rave review in the past two decades and he’s so pretentious that he thinks is French (very nice touch). He lives to pile snark on romantic comedies, a genre that he despises. His editor says, “You are a terrorist of taste!”. He is so negative through-and-through, that he is a pretty miserable person to be around.
Then, he meets (cute) a vital and captivating woman (Dolores Fonzi). To his discomfort, he is pulled into every cliché of a movie romantic comedy (when they kiss for the first time, fireworks even go off in the sky above), and he starts becoming uncharacteristically happy, even giddy.
Writer-director Hernán Gerschuny has created a winning, character-driven comedy. His protagonist’s entire identity is to be unsatisfied by anything and everything. Yet it turns out that he can be hooked by the same joys that he thinks he is above.
The Film Critic is full of references that will delight movie fans – and especially cinephiles, movie critics and movie bloggers! The critic holds forth with a hilarious recounting of rom com conventions (“why are they always running?”). And, of course, the woman that HE meets looks uber cute in a beret, and he races to the airport at the end.
Gerschuny delivers great comic timing. One of the protagonist’s colleagues watches an “experimental short film” (ba dum) “by a Taiwanese director” (ba dum) and then NAMES the director. And THEN he says, “I think he’s got something to say” as it becomes apparent that the “short” is a security video.
All in all, The Film Critic is a satisfying hoot, now available for streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
