“The Film Critic”

When Shia LaBeouf’s plagiarized short film Howard Cantour.com was released, I remember being a little disgusted. Its portrayal of what amounted to a petty, heartbroken, ax-wielding critic for whom junkets existed as a roundtable for silly gossips and inconsequential “Q&A’s” seemed, if not completely inaccurate, at the very least disingenuous. If we are to believe the movies, everyone thinks this way of film critics: lonely people with a vendetta whose only weapon is a word on a page, their power and influence increasingly irrelevant and fading. From Anton Ego to Lindsay Duncan in Birdman, to even a personal favorite, John Ruskin in Mr. Turner, cinematic critics – food, theater, art, etc. – all seem to be drawn similarly, with similar actions, motivations, and, ultimately, weaknesses. Hernán Guerschuny’s The Film Critic doubles down on these irksome stereotypes, presenting the story of a bitter film critic whose hyperintellectualism makes him hate romantic comedies, only later to fall in love himself following the same tropes he hates. And while it may be clever for, say, a high school short film project, this limp attempt at satire (of sorts) is nothing but a savagely unenjoyable venture, even devoid of joys to be had ironically or, at least, while intoxicated.

On top of the aforementioned character attributes of a film critic, Victor Téllez (Rafael Spregelburd), like his kind, is cynical, tired especially of “the same old thing”, particularly with regard to formulaic romantic comedies. In a bit of a twist, his life becomes Shakespearean in the way that those bags you buy in Chinatown are Michael Kors. Its self-entitled dramatic irony feels like a D-grade presentation of potential A-grade material. Yes, film critics become wary of formula, but what Téllez uses to back up his argument of “romantic comedies suck” is a montage of scenes from well-regarded films – from When Harry Met Sally… to Love, Actually. That he uses these films to build an argument against the genre seems odd and wrong-headed. Thus, Téllez feels more like the idea of a film critic, especially one for the audience, than a real person, or a real critic.

And when he has the opportunity to fall in love, his critical faculties prevent him from doing so. But this twist works less as a satire or riff on the formula and more as a different iteration, similarly devoid of much originality. Perhaps the biggest difference is the air of self-congratulations; it comes from Téllez, his ideology consciously antithetical to that of the genre. But unlike, say, a slightly contemporary riff on the romantic comedy like The F Word or a love letter to the movies like Hugo, The Film Critic is devoid of warmth, wit, and nuance.

This is especially annoying since the film wants to be cloyingly self-aware. But Téllez’s romantic interest, Sofia, is just another Manic Pixie Dream Girl, only useful as a catalyst for his growth. Her performance is reminiscent of a slightly less coquettish and buffoonish Zooey Deschanel, inasmuch as she seems to want to channel the same sort of flighty, free-spiritedness of Deschanel’s style. But at least Deschanel has some charm about her, unlike Dolores Fonzi here.

Certainly one of the issues with The Film Critic, as with several films that think they know how to please a particular audience, is its pandering from frame one. Téllez experiences his life as if it were one of those films from the Nouvelle Vague, like La Jetée, Breathless, or Jules and Jim, complete with self-conscious, self-doubting, and self-indulgent voice over. The film opens with still shots, pulling from Chris Marker, and its voice-over of a male protagonist experiencing existential malaise seems to be rather Godardian. And yet, despite the name dropping and drips of stylistic cribbing, The Film Critic is unable to really evoke the same kind of wonderment, panache, desire, or intelligence of its source texts. In this way, it’s reminiscent of a student film that, despite its creator’s enthusiasm for film, doesn’t really know why it has the power to make one feel and think.

Our protagonist is ringing cinema’s death knell. He invokes the names of Godard, Eisenstein, and Deleuze. Perhaps the irony of The Film Critic is that, while its protagonist seems desperately, vehemently against cliché, the film itself waltzes into a forest of them almost with aplomb. If this creative decision is a nod at some self-aware satire, it feels kind of lazy. If it’s earnest, portraying a man who narrates his own first date as if he were writing a review, then it’s frustratingly reductive. The ostensible point of this film is to humanize an intellectual monster, someone incapable of taking a break from basically critical thinking, to make him feel with his heart rather than with his head. Yet there is, at no point, a legitimate attempt to see him as human. He’s a thin sketch of a sad man. We’re told he’s lonely, but we never get to see this, the broken human whose only respite is the cinema. Instead, it’s a big caricature that, as the film’s tagline suggests, the film critic would surely hate.