COLUMBIA TRISTAR HOME ENTERTAINMENT THE CRITIC, AN ANIMATED series ...
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COLUMBIA TRISTAR HOME ENTERTAINMENT
THE CRITIC, AN ANIMATED series starring Jon Lovitz as an embittered New York film critic, didn't have an easy go of it. It was yanked by Fox after two seasons, and still couldn't find much of an audience after Comedy Central picked it up.
In some cases (Family Guy and The Tick come to mind), this is because the network didn't realize what a brilliant show they had, and never properly promoted it. I wish I could say that here, too, but in the case of The Critic, I think it's because the show simply wasn't that funny. I watched it when it aired originally in 1994 and '95, and remember really liking it. Seeing it now, though, I have to wonder what the hell I was thinking.
The Critic had everything going for it. Creators Al Jean and Mike Reiss had been with The Simpsons forever; they even arranged a crossover episode timed to the newcomer's debut. They had a great premise, a great cast and loads of surprising guest stars (in one episode Siskel, Ebert, Gene Shalit and Rex Reed all sing). Yet somehow everything fell flat.
Lovitz plays Jay Sherman, the short, bald, fat, arrogant and extremely unpopular host of Coming Attractions, a movie-review show on a cable network run by a megalomaniacal Ted Turner clone. His parents are extremely wealthy (and extremely WASP-y), but his father's insane. Sherman has to deal with a pathological ex-wife, an adolescent son, an elderly, chainsmoking makeup lady who hates him and movie stars who want to kill him. His best friend is a bad Australian actor, and most of the other people he meets make fun of him to his face.
Scattered throughout each episode are movie and celebrity parodies, from a Keanu Reeves vehicle entitled Speed Reading to a musical version of Apocalypse Now, to Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a rabbi. They're the best thing about the series, and the way the three-disc collection is set up, you don't even have to sit through the actual episodes to see them-they're all gathered together among the extras. Unfortunately, when you see them that way, you realize that they weren't really all that funny either, but only seemed that way in context.
The big problem is, the writing is so bland and inoffensive (despite all the belching jokes) that the episodes play out almost like a milder King of the Hill or Dilbert. Other recent cartoons, like The Family Guy and Animaniacs, have dropped in the same kind of movie parodies regularly, but they were sharp and nasty and funny as hell-much like the shows that surrounded them.
In the case of The Critic, though, after watching all 23 episodes, I'm afraid I'm reduced to quoting Jay Sherman himself: "It stinks!"