I put this here, because it seems to be most fitting. I wish for a DVD, even though I have most episodes on tape. This show is a gem, and since there are threads for Famliy Guy and South Park here, I thought it might fit. Feel free to move it if needed, though.
Only 23 episodes of this show were made, and a few online shorts were created a couple years ago. Yet, this is the best animated series ever, especially for cineasts. So I highly recommend anyone who likes to laugh, and likes Family Guy style "beating-a-dead-horse-joke" pacing (which The Critic perfected first), look at their local listings and tape it whenever it's on Comedy Central late at night.
I watch this show every so often, what ones I was able to tape off Comedy Central, and I'm still finding new jokes every now and then. For instance, Jay and Doris went to a horrid theatre production of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." They returned to her apartment, made small talk, and Jay passed out her couch. The next morning, hearing Doris singing "Like a Virgin" in the shower, he thinks they've slept together. Later at work, she brings him a pair of boxer shorts he left at her apartment. Written on the front in big bright letters was "Shaft Coming Soon!" I've seen that so many times, and took it just as a movie gag, but didn't get the pun until just last night.
Some memorable jokes, to give you an idea for anyone who hasn't seen it:
Jay is driving down a highway in an eighteen-wheeler (he's quit his critic job as a matter of principle; he's a trucker now). A bus has broken down, and a bunch of French chefs, pastries in tow are crying out "help us!" Jay sighs because he can't stop the truck. He has a deadline to get a bunch of politically-correct textbooks to Florida so kids won't think that "Columbus discovered America or that Paul Revere was sober." A farmer sits on the side of the road with a sign: "Meet Ingmar Bergman: $.25!" Again, Jay sighs, even deeper this time. The farmer says to Bergman, "Well, you best get back to the peanut patch with Polanski and Bertoloucci."
Also:
Jay is the kind of guy who, to lighten his image, says to his boss "how about a episode (of his criticism show) about all films I've loved?"
DUKE (Jay's boss, a parody of Ted Turner): Well, it better not be a bunch of arty foreign films no one gives a crap about.
Jay looks at his list (no doubt of mostly arty "foreign crap"), whimpers, and tears off one item and hands it to him.
DUKE (looks at the one "mainstream" item): Citizen who?
JAY (meekly): Kane...?
Another one:
Jay is running in the New York Marathon. His Australian friend, Jeremy Hawke (a parody of pretty-boy stars, of course) runs up beside him.
JEREMY: Hello, mate. You realize I can walk as fast as you can run? (Starts walking on his hands.) Even on my hands I'm faster than you.
JAY: Look, maybe if we talk about something else, it will keep my mind off the race.
JEREMY: Good idea. Yesterday, I got a call from my agent. They want me to star in Rubik's Cube, the movie. And in the film, I'm given this puzzle. If I don't solve it in one hour, a planeload of supermodels will die.
JAY: Okay, that's enough.
JEREMY: Now the problem is, I'm colorblind. But my partner isn't. Now here's the hook: my partner, is a DOG!
JAY: Please! This isn't working.
JEREMY: You know who they're going to get to play the voice of the dog? Roger Clinton!
JAY: Could you move a little to your right?
JEREMY: Alright, but wha-- Ahhh!!!
Jeremy falls down an open manhole.
JAY: Thank you!
Later... Jay is getting delirious from running so much. Jeremy pulls up in his limo, with a woman in tow.
JAY: Jeremy! I'm so glad to see you! I've been thinking about that WONDERFUL Rubik's Cube movie. So what happens? Do the supermodels DIE? It would be so sad if they did...
JEREMY: Jay, you look like you need help. Fortunately, I've got a nurse with me.
WOMAN (sexily): I'm not a nurse, I'm a stewardess.
JEREMY: Oh. Well, Jay, it looks like you could use a kosher meal.
JAY: A little kugel maybe you have? (Smiles)
(Jay's Jewish, in case you didn't figure. There's Jewish jokes aplenty here, but nothing really racist, more proud than anything.)
More coming soon. :)
"We're the bears that sing for Duke. Doo-dah, doo-dah. Drinkin' moonshine 'til we puke, oh di-doo-dah-day."
Hehe, silly belchin' bears...
This was a pretty damn good show, but there are no repeats airing and All I have is slight memories of some of the jokes. Like the Roseanne/Jurrasic park joke, the Mrs. Doubfire/Arnold Schwarzenegger joke, little things like that. I also remember one episode where Jay's parents are stuck on an island with either monkeys or natives and one of them says to Jay's father, "I will crush your head with a rock while you sleep." I found it halarious then and still do now. For some reason.
BTW, why was the series so short-lived? I heard that it was because it offended many people including Arnold Schwarzenneger. The internet show was okay, but it just couldn't compare....
Maybe I'm mistaken but I thought I read something about the Critic dvd's coming in early fall.
just for the record, i love this fucking show.
My favorite episode was the Siskel & Ebert one. Did they do their own voices?
Ghostboy yes ghostboy yes ghostboy
The only memory I have of the show, other than the intro was a scene where he was sitting in a jacuzzi and 2 or 3 women walked by and he said something to the effect of "hello ladies, i have tickets to some concert" and then one screamed "that thing's not plugged in!" and they ran away.
Ok, so that was a short memory, and not entirely funny...
I would really love to see DVDs of this. I should've mentioned in the "who would play you?" thread that Jay Sherman should play me in the movie of my life.
My favorite was when he enthusiastically for renting "all 13 episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz!' for father/son time. :)
My memories of this show are not that great, but I DO remember it being a really good show... the one joke that has never left me is when he becomes a truck driver and initially his handle is LARD ASS, but then by the end they change the L into an H to spell HARD ASS!
Nick
Only thing I remember is when that nurse from Empty Nest started doing a voice on the show. And didn't they move from ABC to FOX or vice versa? And they would make fun of the other network?
For the record, Jon Lovitz is hilarious.
This was a damn funny show. Does Comedy Central still air it on Sunday nights?
Is the snack bar still open?
To my knowledge, no to both.
Sorry, man.
you are mistaken.
http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thecritic/
sundays at 1:30am 12:30central
and yes, the snack bar is still very open.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.putt-putt-rome.com%2Fgraphics%2FSnack%2520Bar%25201.JPG&hash=5bd7d93c1e769ec656ab026c9fbeb29e3674fd31)
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Quote from: Derek237The internet show was okay, but it just couldn't compare....
yeah i almost thought i imagined this. who else here got to see it? they just made it a few years ago (long after the show went off the air). it was pretty limited animation, but pretty bizarre that it came back in any form at all. i went looking for it a minute ago but couldnt find any traces of it still online. does anyone know if you can still watch these online?
Long time in replying, I know, but it's better than never. You can still watch the animated shorts online, as far as I know. Just check out comedycentral.com.
The big news, though, is The Critic is now out on DVD. I haven't bought it myself yet, but I have 'em all on tape. For anyone who does have the DVDs, how are they? I definitely play to get 'em as soon as I can. It's worth it to support such a ... heh ... "worthy cause." :-D
I bought the DVD a few days ago. Great stuff. It includes all 23 episodes, and as a bonus it has the webisodes, too. Which is good to have. It has commentary on 8 episodes, but I haven't listened to it yet. Halarious show. And as the episodes progressed it felt like it was just starting to get really good, too. Sucks it was cancelled. Fans should buy the set. Not a bad price, I got mine for $44.99.
I'm definitely buying this soon. I looooooved this show! Possibly the best show for film buffs ever, ever, ever.
yeah it is good and it was sold out at many places i tried to find it. Got mine for 44.99
Sounds like you guys are enjoying your Critic DVD's. Unfortunately I have no money so I have to wait. :(
One of my favorite quotes from recent memory:
Jay sits in his chair on the set of his show, with a HUGE stack of videocassettes behind him.
JAY: Finally, tonight we will review the latest documentary from Ken Burns, who brought us "The Civil War" and "Baseball." It's a new twenty-nine hour epic entitled "Electric Football." Here's a clip from episode seventeen: "This Game Sucks."
MAN: If you ask me, electric football is a metaphor for America: always shaking, always noisy, never really knowing where it's going -- heh-heh! Hey, wait a minute! Electric football's nothing like America! It's just a stupid game that doesn't even work! Get that camera off me! You heard me! (stands, cocks shotgun, aims at cameraman) Get your documentary-making butt outta here!
Funny thing is, the metaphor kinda works, if you think about it. :-D
Saw this at Borders for $41.99, but Amazon.com has it cheaper, so I'll probably order it from there when I get a chance.
I never really cared much for the show. I think it'd work better if it were live action
Quote from: SlorgI never really cared much for the show. I think it'd work better if it were live action
Starring Roger Ebert, perhaps? :lol:
Quote from: godardianQuote from: SlorgI never really cared much for the show. I think it'd work better if it were live action
Starring Roger Ebert, perhaps? :lol:
jon lovitz would be fine.
Quote from: PQuote from: godardianQuote from: SlorgI never really cared much for the show. I think it'd work better if it were live action
Starring Roger Ebert, perhaps? :lol:
jon lovitz would be fine.
That could actually be really good, probably, with that casting.
Totally. What's even cooler is that he actually sounds like Jon Lovitz.
Quote from: PawbloeTotally. What's even cooler is that he actually sounds like Jon Lovitz.
Yes, but it would be really Warholian and mess with our heads in a good way to have "the voice" of the character then go on to actually
be that character...
Interview with Mike Reiss on "The Critic" DVD
DVDFanatic.com: Are you excited that fans have the ability to see every episode of “The Critic” on DVD?
Mike Reiss: I absolutely am. The show got very kicked around, it was a brutal couple of years on the air and we weren’t that appreciated but it’s been a nice run ever since. It’s been running for nine years on Comedy Central; there are only 23 episodes and they show it and show it and show it. Now that it’s out on DVD, it’s already selling like crazy and the response has been so very sweet that it’s enormously heartening. I’m glad any time people really like something they can buy it and own it, rather than staying up till 1am to watch it on Comedy Central.
DVDFanatic.com: When did you finally decide to put this show on DVD and how was that process?
Mike: Whenever you do something you always think that maybe it will be retained. As soon as there were DVDs, I wondered, gee, wouldn’t it be nice if “The Critic” came out on DVD? I really didn’t think that we made that cut. I didn’t think that we were that much of a cult show but then it kept turning up on fan lists when there were petitions to see which show you’d like to see on DVD. “The Critic” kept popping up there so I think the idea came from outside basically and then of course when “Family Guy” sold through the roof and became the number one selling DVD a few years ago, they said “hey, what other flop cartoons do they have lying around?” So then they came up with “The Critic” and they came to us and of course we were very eager to do it and part of what you see is actually a rush job, the quality is there but once they committed to putting it on DVD, they could not wait to get it out. The one flaw on the DVD is that it contains so much bonus material and it’s nowhere mentioned on the box. They were such in a hurry to get it out there.
DVDFanatic.com: When you created this show, where did the idea come from and can you talk about getting Jon Lovitz involved?
Mike: Al Jean and I were running “The Simpsons” and Jim Brooks came to us and said that he wanted to develop a new show that was going to be a live action sitcom. His idea was to do a show set at the Today Show involving the make-up woman working on the Today show. The idea didn’t really appeal to us but this was James L. Brooks so we said let’s give it a shot and as Al and I were kicking around the Today Show, the one character who really appealed to us was Gene Shalit, the film critic. That’s what really got to us and then while we were doing that, Jim had just seen a screening of “A League of their Own” and he said, “Do you like Jon Lovitz?” And we said, “Oh, we love him.” We were always fans of his on SNL and we actually had used him on “The Simpsons” a few times so we came up with the idea, “Why don’t you do a show about Jon Lovitz as the film critic on the Today Show and we wrote this whole pilot for Lovitz and nobody but Lovitz, it had to be him. We went to Jon and said, “Would you like to do this?” and he said, “No, I’m a movie star! I’m not going to do a TV show.” So, the very last idea we had on the show was to make it animated. That was our last decision. It was going to be live action up until that point just to work around Jon’s schedule we had to do it as a cartoon. I don’t think any other cartoon show was conceived in that way. I think the show was much better for being animated.
DVDFanatic.com: The style of this show is very different from the other cartoon shows out there, how did you go about developing that?
Mike: There are a couple things. Al and I, when we were doing it, said that we want to make this very very different from “The Simpsons.” We just didn’t want to look…we were the first “Simpsons” alumni to go off and create our own show and we didn’t want to look derivative so basically everything “The Simpsons” was, we tried to do different. Instead of suburban, it was urban, instead of middle class it was upper class, instead of a family, this was going to be a single man. So stylistically we said, “well let’s break reality more.” It was a trend that I think we were always standing towards on “The Simpsons.” When Al and I took over the show, suddenly “The Simpsons” were watching a lot more T.V. and we would open half of our episodes with movie parodies and it’s the kind of thing we like to write, very short sketches…satire. The show just got very silly very quickly. The father character on the show, Franklin, we wanted him to be just a quirky eccentric and by episode three he’s running around in a diaper. We hired a very fun staff and this is the angle they really enjoyed. It took off in its own direction.
DVDFanatic.com: First the show came out on ABC and then was switched to FOX but didn’t have a long life there. Why do you think that audiences weren’t prepared for a show like this back when it first came out?
Mike: It’s a two part story. It just didn’t belong on ABC. ABC was very gracious to let us on the air, they gave us a great time slot before “Home Improvement” but ABC was this family-friendly kind of therapy network at the time and it just didn’t work there. When we were not working, ABC said to us, “Where should we put you on our schedule?” And we said, “There’s nowhere on your schedule we fit in.” So then we took the show to FOX and this woman who was president of FOX, bought the show and she got behind it and said, “We’ll put you on after ‘The Simpsons’.” And between the time she bought the show and we debuted, FOX had a regime change and this new president came in who absolutely hated the show. He hated it and he was very vocal about it. Week after week we would send him the episodes and he would call and say, “I hated this one. I hated this one.” So, we debuted after “The Simpsons” and for three weeks in a row, we had record breaking ratings, this was the highest any show had done after “The Simpsons” and then the guy just pulled us off the air. He replaced us with one of his very own projects that was a show called, “House of Buggin”, which is not coming out on DVD. We had a lucky break to get a second chance on FOX and we just had a very unlucky break that this man was President of FOX for six months and just hated our show with a passion for no good reason. He would rather fail with his own projects than succeed with one of his predecessors.
DVDFanatic.com: There are a lot of quirky Hollywood characters on this show. Were any of them based on anyone in particular?
Mike: I don’t think we knew any of the people. I mean it’s very obvious, you know, certainly we have the Mel Gibson, Paul Hogan movie star and the Ted Turner, head of the network. The parents on the show, we wanted a couple of very waspy, straight-laced types and Jim Brooks said to us, “being in your Harvard year books.” Al and I were roommates at Harvard and we just went through the year book and found a photo of a professor and his wife in the book that we just took directly and made into parents on the show. They are direct drawings of the two including the professor in the year book had a drink in his hand so the father always has a cocktail in his hand.
DVDFanatic.com: What is your favorite episode?
Mike: My favorite episode is the Siskel and Ebert episode. They were sort of the inspiration for the whole show so, I loved their show, and they were such good sports to come on and do the show. They did everything we asked them to. They sang on the episode and I thought they had real comic presence. I really enjoyed having them on the show. I thought that one came out extra good, extra funny and sort of grounded the show in the real world to see these guys come on. What was interesting is that we had a lot of film critics on the show playing themselves. We didn’t have much luck getting guest stars except getting film critics who are all shameless hams that would do anything we told them to.
DVDFanatic.com: “The Family Guy” seems to be along the same lines of humor as was “The Critic” and recently they’ve announced they are bringing back “The Family Guy.” If you brought “The Critic” back nowadays, do you think you’d survive?
Mike: It has come up a lot especially since the DVD is selling so well. I should just be gung ho that “The Critic” could come back but it’s been cancelled on two networks, we did all these internet shorts that we worked really hard on and then nobody saw them. Al and I knocked ourselves out. We would write them from ten to midnight on odd days and produce these things and not even the biggest “Critic” fan knew these things were on the net. So, I get a little scared committing any more time and money to “The Critic.” If somebody else wants to come along and do it, I’m all for it because there are people who want to see “The Critic” but it just might not be me.
DVDFanatic.com: What was the reasoning behind making the internet shorts?
Mike: You just have to remember the year 2000 when everyone in Hollywood was getting involved in the internet and Steven Spielberg had an internet company and it was going to be a big thing. Everbody signed these internet deals and nobody did anything. Steven Spielberg had this company called POP and so Jim Brooks got a very big deal to develop a lot of internet series and he signed a lot of people to do it including “The Critic.” It was his idea to do “The Critic” on the internet and we could do what we wanted to with the series, which is a movie would be in a theater one week and a parody would be on the next week. Our turnaround was that quick and we could do it that rapidly. When these things aired, they were right on top of the movies but what happened was that everybody had these big plans, Al and I did the work and nobody else in Hollywood did. Nothing else got made but these 12 internet shorts and so that was it. They were lost in the great void of the internet.
DVDFanatic.com: What are some of your favorite DVDs and why?
Mike: Mr. Show and Ben Stiller. I like the shows that are like “The Critic.” Some of these forgotten gems. I saw this weird movie, “Interstate 60” by Bob Gale. It was this weird type of project of love. It was sort of interesting and it was sort of weird and it made for a perfect DVD because you’re watching it going, “how did this happen?” and you listen to the commentary and you say, “Oh, that’s how it happened!” I thought that was a great DVD experience.