LOS ANGELES – Actor Jesse Eisenberg took a swing at film critics with a fake movie review he wrote in the New Yorker in the voice of a bitter movie critic whose reviews are based more on jealousy and laziness than film knowledge.
Eisenberg’s piece, An Honest Film Review , began with one of the reasons he did not like the film, “This week I am reviewing, ‘Paintings of Cole,’ which I didn’t like, because the press screening was all the way uptown, and there were huge delays on the J train.”
Some critics took to Twitter to chide Eisenberg for his item.
But Variety chief film critic Justin Chang doesn’t necessarily see Eisenberg’s piece as an attack piece.
“I know a lot of my colleagues were angry about this,” he told FOX411. “I wasn’t angry at all. Is it an attack? No, it’s not a very good or sharp attack but I think that’s overstating it to say. I think in general, critics need to be thick skinned and need to be not personally offended by this in the slightest. It’s kind of funny to me because in a weird way, as some of my colleagues have pointed out, Jesse Eisenberg has basically turned critics into a stereotypical Jesse Eisenberg character.”
Film critic Marshall Fine also had no problems with Eisenberg’s critique.
“I guess I have thicker skin than most,” Fine said. “I found his piece amusing if slight.”
In his piece, Eisenberg continued to ridicule the non-existent movie.
“In sum, these are the main problems with Paintings of Cole: it was inconveniently shown on the Upper West Side, written by a guy I envy, screened by a cute intern whose name was too confusing to remember, based on an idea that I poorly executed in grad school, and praised by the Times, which rejected me.”
Pop culture expert, Lisa Durden, praised Eisenberg’s critique and jabs at film critics in the industry.
“I absolutely LOVE Jesse Eisenberg's parody of the 'bitter boy' movie critic, it was spot on!” she said. “These lazy movie critics, bastardize movie reviews, because they are wannabe directors, who's dreams fell down the watering hole of failure, due to their lack of tenacity.”
Chang said that despite the backlash Eisenberg has received, he doesn’t believe the actor will face any harm when it comes to future reviews from critics.
“I do think that even people who are kind of ill-tempered at the moment will continue to give him a fair share,” he explained. “I think that what’s being missed here is perhaps that film critics have enormous respect for the art of film making or whatever it is we are critiquing.”
Eisenberg stars alongside Daniel Radcliffe in “Now You See Me 2” coming out in June 2016.
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