The Critic is an American adult animated sitcom revolving around the life of New York film critic Jay Sherman, voiced by Jon Lovitz. It was created by writing partners Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who had previously worked as writers and showrunners on the third and fourth seasons of The Simpsons. The series was animated by Film Roman and 23 episodes of The Critic were produced. The show was first broadcast on ABC in 1994 and finished its original run on Fox in 1995.
Episodes featured film parodies with notable examples including a musical version of Apocalypse Now; Howard Stern's End (Howards End); Honey, I Ate the Kids (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids/The Silence of the Lambs); The Cockroach King (The Lion King); Abe Lincoln: Pet Detective (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective); and Scent of a Jackass and Scent of a Wolfman (Scent of a Woman). The show often referenced popular films, such as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and The Godfather, and routinely lampooned Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, The Critic was cancelled after two seasons. It continued to air through reruns on Comedy Central and then on Locomotion. From February 1, 2000 to 2001, ten webisodes were produced using Macromedia Shockwave; these webisodes were broadcast on AtomFilms.com and Shockwave.com.
In the late 2000s, reruns of the show aired again on ReelzChannel in the US and on Teletoon's programming block Teletoon at Night in Canada.
Premise
The show follows the life of a 36-year-old film critic from New York named Jay Sherman. His televised review show, Coming Attractions, airs on the Philips Broadcasting cable network. Sherman is cold, mean-spirited, and elitist as a movie critic,
The show sometimes included appearances of real-life critics, such as Gene Shallit, Rex Reed, Gene Siskel, and Roger Ebert, who provided their own voices. When choosing things to parody, Reiss and Jean made a conscious decision to find the right balance between current pop culture and references that would stand the test of time.
Broadcast
The Critic was "the first major non-family sitcom animated program to appear in primetime." But despite improvement of the ratings, Fox refused to officially cancel the show until much later. He specialized in impressions, while Jameson's specialty was accents and dialects. Nevertheless, there are many similarities between the two series. Gen X TV: The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place argues that The Critic became a critical success while other animated shows of the early 1990s flopped was because "the makers of these shows failed to realize that The Simpsons didn't become a hit because of animation [but] because of its style of humor", and says that The Critic understood this. It adds the show "took the media-obsession/parody portions of The Simpsons and created a separate show around them". Planet Simpson describes the show as "the closest thing The Simpsons ever had to a spin-off." before the show went to commercial break.
Matt Groening had no part in its inception, and wanted to make this very clear, so he would not be associated with any success or failure the show would have. He claimed that in the public consciousness, this was his show—a direct spin-off to The Simpsons.
Many voice actors appear in both The Simpsons and The Critic, and regulars on both shows have made cameos in the others. For example, Nancy Cartwright, Doris Grau, Tress MacNeille, Russi Taylor, and Jon Lovitz have all played primary/secondary characters on both shows. Maurice LaMarche, who played many characters on The Critic, "played George C. Scott getting hit in the groin with a football" in the crossover episode. His only line was "Ow, my groin." He also did Jay's belch in the episode. This episode caused some conflict between Simpsons creator Matt Groening and executive producer James L. Brooks. Groening decided to take his name off the credits and did not appear in the DVD commentary. He publicly complained about the episode, which went to air in the end. He said "for more than six months I tried to convince Jim Brooks and everyone connected with the show not to do such a cynical thing, which would surely be perceived by the fans as nothing more than a pathetic attempt to...advertise The Critic at the expense of the integrity of The Simpsons." In response, Brooks said "[Groening] is a gifted, adorable, cuddly ingrate. But his behavior right now is rotten. And, it's not pretty when a rich man acts like this."
Hallmarks
Much like the opening sequence in The Simpsons with its chalkboard, sax solo, and couch gags, The Critic has a distinctive opening sequence featuring minor gags. Jay is always awakened by a disquieting phone call or radio news report, and eventually watches a clip that parodies a well-known film before delivering the same negative opinion: "It stinks!" He watches the closing credits in a theater and delivers one of four comeback lines (five, once the character of Alice Tompkins was added in the second season) to an usher who tells him the show is over.
Themes
One of the main elements featured on The Critic is the lampooning of the entertainment industry. The A.V. Club mentioned that Jean and Reiss's The Simpsons episodes have a high number of parodies, spoofs and homages from the characters watching television and films: "They didn't need any such excuse for film parodies on The Critic since Jay's life was inherently and organically filled with film. It proved the perfect delivery system for an endless series of clever, bite-sized spoofs." Another example is in the June 22 episode "L.A. Jay," where after trying to break into the film business by writing a script, which is revealed to be rather good, a studio buys it off him for $100,000 in order to bury it, thereby keeping quality out of the industry. The article "Ten Frighteningly Prophetic Parodies from The Critic" claimed that some of the show's spoofs "have come true (or close to true), proving that there really isn't anything that's too stupid for Hollywood to make".
GrabBagCinema said the show would appeal to cinema fans "because it really understood movies, celebrities, Hollywood and humour...[you would understand] the references and [see] the effort the writers and animators put in, to recapture the movies you grew up loving and remembering... but they did it with clever humour that wouldn't offend you." The same review praised how unlike many modern critics, Sherman was honest with how much he disliked certain films.
Reception and legacy
Contemporaneous
The Critic received mixed to positive reviews when it first aired. In 1994, The Chicago Sun-Times gave a typical review of the show with, "Jay Sherman, the eponymous culture vulture of The Critic, would undoubtedly say his new animated comedy on ABC 'stinks.' Fortunately for him [The Critic] smells pretty good to me." The show has since developed a cult following, with much of it coming through the show's weekend reruns on Comedy Central up until about 2005.
The DVD set also got many positive reviews, such as one from Animated Views which gave it an overall rating of 10/10. Mike Reiss's favourite episode is the Siskel and Ebert one. In January 2009, they ranked the show 26th in their other list of the Top 100 Best Animated TV Series. In the latter article, IGN said: "Of all the projects completed by ex-Saturday Night Live players, The Critic is the most fully realized, hilarious and heartwarming. It took its cues from Woody Allen movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan, and offered up a style of random abstract humor that wouldn't really be seen again until Family Guy." In December 2011, Complex ranked the show 6th in their list of The 25 Most Underrated Animated TV Shows Of All Time.
People magazine gave it a B, saying "This animated series is slyly amusing when sticking it to showbiz, taking sarcastic swipes at everyone from Steven Seagal to Gene Shalit. At its best, it's still several strides behind the savage, protean wit of The Simpsons, and the humor sputters when the focus is personal." Of the third season, IGN said "I was thrilled to find out that Gracie Films has started producing new episodes of the cancelled ABC/Fox/Comedy Central show The Critic—and for web cartoons that don't depend on the violence/swear cop-out for the humor, the shows are actually really well produced."
Early on in its run, Siskel and Ebert did a review of the show. It was the only television series they ever reviewed. Some of the criticisms they provided, if left unattended to, may have been factors to the show's cancellation. They said the show did not have as many memorable characters as The Simpsons, and encouraged the writers to work on that. They said the second episode was a let down because "it didn't seem to be about the world of a movie critic," and was instead about "a single dad and his geeky son." They said the jokes involving Jay's dad get tiresome, and that the station boss isn't as sharp a parody as he could be. Gene Siskel said, "if The Critic is gonna succeed—and I hope it does—it desperately needs to refocus itself on the movies and the way critics interact with them." He added that the show needs a second critic, and jokingly said he and Roger Ebert should (and would love to) save the show by writing scripts for them. Ebert said the show should have 2 to 3 movie/genre parodies per episode. He added he would like to see Jay watch television to allow the show to satirize that medium as well. This would focus the show on the media, and not let it become another show about a man and his problems. Siskel said the writers should keep Jay as a smart critic. Regardless of his personality, if his critiques are witty and intelligent, by extension the show's satire becomes much sharper. The two critics later appeared as themselves in an episode where they ended their partnership and each recruited Jay to join them for a new series; when Jay realized that Gene and Roger deeply missed working together, he engineered their reconciliation and went back to his own series.
Later analysis
AOL TV published an article in 2009 entitled Gone Too Soon: The Critic, in which they analyzed the cancellation of the show. It said "The creators and Lovitz seem to [care about the show], as there are always talks cropping up of a revival of The Critic, either as an animated project, or possibly a live-action one. There are fan sites out there, but as time passes with no new material, many of these are becoming floating time capsules". Plus, a lot of effort was put into the release of the DVD (for which there was a lot of demand), meaning there is still a fan base as well as a passionate cast and crew. The show is generally considered one of the great TV shows cancelled too early into its run. The Columbia Spectator said the show was "one of television's great lost causes." Voice actor Maurice LaMarche considered The Critic one of his "personal favorites," saying "I would almost give anything to bring back The Critic, along with Pinky and the Brain; those are the two most satisfying jobs I've ever had." Reiss thinks the show holds up very well.
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| 1995
| Al Jean and Mike Reiss
| Annie Award for Best Individual Achievement for Creative Supervision in the Field of Animation
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Streaming and home media
Responding to the successful DVD sales of Family Guy and The Simpsons, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment decided to release The Critic: The Complete Series DVD box set on January 27, 2004, which includes all 2 seasons and 23 TV episodes (in their original production order) and the webisodes. The show achieved good sales, jumping onto the DVD list at 14 on Amazon, and quickly going through five issuings.
The series was previously available on Crackle but is no longer available there. It is currently available on Tubi.
Possible revival
On March 28, 2025, Jon Lovitz posted on Twitter about reviving the show by stating, “You keep telling me you want it back. I've been trying for years! Well, now, creator Al Jean is on board!!! If you want it back, we need your help! Please like this post and spread the word! So we can show the studio, how many people want it!”.