The Critic: The Complete Series on DVD

It Stinks!

In a time when the most successful TV shows seem to be about homosexuals, investigating crimes, or really bad stand-up comedians, it’s no surprise that shows like The Critic and Family Guy have been cancelled.

Originally broadcast in 1994, The Critic was promptly cancelled. But execs saw the potential and tried running the show again on a different network. Once again, it was promptly cancelled. Then it was transferred to Comedy Central to run in syndication, and once again it was promptly cancelled. Years later, with the same people behind them, brand new two-minute episodes surfaced on the Internet, even bringing back Jon Lovitz to voice our favorite film critic.

The show always had its own cult following, so it’s about time it was released on DVD, with every show from its two season run (and even the later “webisodes”) spread over three discs.

Jay Sherman is not the most popular man in New York. He’s short, fat, bald, and -- even for a critic -- ugly. He hates pretty much every movie that comes out, and he’s just a downright irritating and irritable man. He has a failed marriage (from which he has a son, Marty), an unaffectionate adoptive family, and his only real friend is an Australian film hunk who stars in a lot of bad movies.

Jay’s only successes with the fairer sex include a beautiful actress who may or may not be using him for a good review, and a lonely projectionist who’s more than a little obsessed (Misery style). Still, through all his misfortunes and endless array of Sherman-haters, he seems like a relatively happy guy.

The Critic is one of the better shows to air in the last ten years, but of course it doesn’t compare to The Simpsons or Seinfeld in their prime. Some of the episodes just aren’t all that good, which is unfortunate, but even at its worst it’s still better than most of the crap out there. Jon Lovitz voices Sherman perfectly, and the show features plenty of clever and hilarious parodies of some of Hollywood’s more popular flicks.

All we can do is hope that, in the tradition of Family Guy, The Critic will be such a success on DVD that it will spur the creators to make new episodes again (although we still haven’t heard more than rumors about the whole Family Guy situation). But even if that’s not the case, having the complete series of The Critic on DVD is a very good start, and we’ll be happy enough.

Each of the 23 episodes is presented in full frame, with rich, sharp color (and a bit of grain). It also looks a little soft in various places, but this isn’t the kind of DVD in which we’re worried too much about audio and video.

Speaking of audio, it’s presented in Dolby Digital Stereo, and it sounds…pretty much like you’d expect.

Extras include audio commentary on 8 episodes, an 11-minute making-of featurette, storyboard branching on “A Pig-Boy and His Dog” (selectable when an icon appears during the episode), Jay’s Top Ten List and some Trailer Parodies, and the Webisodes that appeared online a couple of years ago.

It’s a very respectable presentation for a long-overdue TV show.

The Critic, from Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment
520 minutes, 1.33:1 full frame, Dolby Digital Stereo
Starring Jon Lovitz, Nancy Cartwright, Kath Soucie, Doris Grau, Gerritt Graham, Judith Ivey, Christine Cavanaugh, Park Overall
Created by Al Jean & Mike Reiss

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