The Critic was a short-lived animated comedy from the producers of The Simpsons (Al Jean & Mike Reiss) which aired from 1994-1995, the first season on ABC and the second on FOX. The series centers around 36-year-old balding and divorced New York film critic Jay Sherman (Jon Lovitz). Jay hosts a cable film show called “Coming Attractions”, where he rates films on his unique Shermometer scale, though most films usually just get his trademarked “It Stinks!”. The station owner, wealthy, conservative Duke Phillips (Charles Napier) isn’t really a fan of Jay’s, and Jay also doesn’t get much love from his chain-smoking makeup lady Doris (Doris Grau).

When he’s not reviewing terrible movies, Jay can be found dining at L’ane Riche, owned by the snooty Vlada (Nick Jameson), or hanging with his only friend, Australian movie star Jeremy Hawke (Maurice LaMarche), the hunky lead of the Crocodile Ghandi movie franchise. Jay hasn’t had much luck in the love department—ever since his divorce, he seems to always be going after the wrong women—an actress just looking for a good review, a psychotic superfan, and so on. He shares custody of his husky 11-year-old son Marty (Christine Cavanaugh), who’s a chip off the old block, and one of the only people who seems to actually like Jay. His rich adoptive parents—overbearing, conservative mother Eleanor (Judith Ivey) and absent-minded father Franklin (Gerrit Graham)—see his more normal younger sister Margo (Nancy Cartwright) as the hope for the family.

Storylines are set in both Jay’s personal and his professional life, where he’s usually the butt of the joke. And speaking of butts, there’s a lot of sight gags strewn throughout the series with Jay wearing the free promotional movie swag he gets as part of his job, like shorts with “Backdraft” written on the backside, or boxers with “For the Boys”. The series makes use of fast-paced quips and dialogue, cutaways, pop culture parodies and references, and movie trailer parodies to provide laughs and satirize the film industry. The series often cuts to Jay reviewing some ridiculous movie spin-off or sequel, like Forrest Gump 2, Edward Plunger Hands, and so on, which feature celebrity impersonations. However, the show also features lots of critics making guest appearances, poking fun of themselves. Rex Reed, Gene Shallit, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert all guest star, and the latter two even sing a musical number in of the of the show’s most hilarious episodes. There’s also many celebrities making guest appearances as themselves, from Geraldo Rivera to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Milton Berle and more. And speaking of musical numbers, there are some great ones, including the wonderful “Beauty and King Dork” parody of the Beauty and the Beast ballroom scene in the pilot, about how a beautiful woman could have possibly fallen in love with a dork like Jay.

Similar to The Simpsons, where each episode’s opening credits sequence offers a different couch gag, blackboard writing, and instrument solo, the opening titles of each episode of The Critic include Jay getting a different strange wake-up phone call, and a clip from some terrible movie, which receives the obligatory “It Stinks!”. The second season of the series changes things up somewhat, and not just some alterations to the opening credits. The season introduces a more long-term love interest for Jay, adding Alice Tompkins (Park Overall) and her daughter Penny Tompkins (Russi Taylor) to the main characters, with Alice becoming Jay’s new assistant in the season premiere.

Jon Lovitz is perfectly cast in this role. He really brings out the sad sack, downtrodden nature of Jay’s life, but in a way that still remains fun, humerous and hopeful. His voice has now become synonymous with Jay’s iconic catch phrases like “It Stinks”, “Hotchie Motchie” and the guttural “AHEM”. The rest of the voice cast also do an excellent job of bringing the the supporting characters to life. I hadn’t seen this series in at least 15 years, but as soon as I heard the unforgettable voices of Jay’s parents, Duke Phillips and Doris, I was instantly transported back.

I really enjoyed revisiting this series, which had been a favorite of mine when it originally aired. Once I started watching I just couldn’t help but keep binging through the episodes. There is a definite rewatchability to this series, though some of the humor feels a bit dated, such as a joke about a Home Alone 5 film, when there’s actually already been five of those movies! There was also a parody film about Babe Ruth that ends with the birth of Bill Cosby to “give it a happy ending”, and some other celebrity references that were more topical 25 years ago. However, I still found the characters, situations and movie parodies to be a lot of fun. It was a funny, creative show that was cut too short.

Sony previously released the complete series of The Critic on DVD back in 2004. Sony’s release was split across three discs and included a host of bonus material such as commentary tracks, storyboard comparisons, clip montages, a 12-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, and 30+ minutes of webisodes that constituted a third season. Unfortunately Mill Creek’s re-release drops all of this great bonus material and squeezes each season onto a single disc. However, the picture quality still looks quite good and doesn’t really show signs of being over compressed. The stereo audio track makes nice use of the left and right channels—this was especially noticeable in a scene where Jay is running back and forth across the screen. The episodes are presented in their original production order rather than in the order they aired on TV. (I wish more TV-on-DVD releases would do this when episodes were aired out of order!) The series comes packed in a standard DVD case with a floating tray to hold the first season disc. The release does not include a slipcover or a digital copy. The first season’s 13 episodes are found on disc one, while the second season’s 10 episodes are on the second disc. There are optional English subtitles.

What’s Included:

Episodes: (522 min)

• All 23 episodes of the TV series (episodes are presented in production order):
  • Disc 1 / Season 1 (1994, 13 eps):
    “Pilot”, “Marty’s First Date”, “Miserable”, “Dial ‘M’ for Mother”, “A Little Deb Will Do Ya”, “Eyes on the Prize”, “Every Doris Has Her Day”, “Marathon Mensch”, “L.A. Jay”, “Dr. Jay”, “A Day at the Races and a Night at the Opera”, “Uneasy Rider”, “A Pig Boy and His Dog”
  • Disc 2 / Season 2 (1995, 10 eps):
    “Sherman, Woman and Child”, “Sherman of Arabia”, “A Song for Margo”, “From Chunk to Hunk”, “Lady Hawke”, “Frankie and Ellie Get Lost”, “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice”, “All the Duke’s Men”, “Dukerella”, “I Can’t Believe It’s a Clip Show”
• 480i / 1.33:1
• Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0
• Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

There is no bonus material included on this release.

Final Thoughts:

Mill Creek’s re-release of The Critic on DVD allows fans to revisit this fun animated series from the producers of The Simpsons. The picture and sound are great, but to quote Jay Sherman,
“It Stinks” that the release loses all of the bonus material that was previously included on the original Sony DVD release. Die hard fans will likely want to seek out a copy of the original DVD release, but others who don’t care about the supplemental material should definitely pick up this more bargain-priced re-release from Mill Creek.