Think about an acerbic love youngster miraculously spawned by Addison DeWitt of “All About Eve” and Waldo Lydecker of “Laura,” with John Simon serving as midwife, and you’ll be ready for Jimmy Erskine, the viciously witty and mercilessly demanding title character performed with totally scrumptious flamboyance by Ian McKellen in “The Critic.” Directed by Anand Tucker (“Shopgirl”) and written by Patrick Marber (“Notes on a Scandal”), the movie is a heady brew of interval thriller, compelling melodrama and jet-black comedy, and the second most exceptional factor about it’s how seamlessly these various parts gel.

Much more exceptional, nevertheless, is McKellen’s multifaceted portrayal of the person aptly often known as “The Monster,” each behind his again and to his face, within the movie’s world of Thirties London theater.  

Erskine takes unseemly enjoyment of savagely shredding the productions (and performances) he finds missing, and the bodily appearances of actors he deems unattractive. He insists that his merciless critiques represent solely part of his ongoing marketing campaign to uphold his lofty requirements. However it’s transparently apparent that he really enjoys utilizing bitchy bon mots and brutal put-downs as offensive weapons.

Evidently, readers of his newspaper have taken simply as a lot enjoyment of savoring his acidic opinions for effectively into 40 years — effectively, a minimum of these readers who’ve by no means been on the improper finish of his razor-sharp pen.

A lesser actor forged as Erskine — say, one who would have focused the critic’s cruelest cuts — may need been content material to easily give a efficiency that may very well be labeled Oscar Mayer and offered by the slice. However there may be extra, far more, to McKellen’s rendering of Erskine than uproariously unfettered misanthropy. Repeatedly rising to the problem of maneuvering by means of the movie’s myriad plot twists and tonal shifts, McKellen is by turns imperiously hilarious, archly devious, forlornly melancholy and pathetically determined. Certainly, he really manages to generate sympathy for The Monster, and never solely as a result of he’s overtly homosexual at a time when homosexuality was outlawed in London.

We’re launched to Erskine as he makes a characteristically grand entrance to a revival of a Jacobean tragedy, and is visibly appalled as he endures the manufacturing’s evident (in his opinion) flaws. He then goes dwelling to dictate to Tom (Alfred Enoch), his conspicuously youthful manservant, typist and longtime companion, penning a discover that singles out for industrial-strength venom the main woman, Nina Land (Gemma Arterton, a standout in a particularly difficult function). His description of her displaying “all of the grace of a startled mule” is without doubt one of the nicer issues he writes about her. And, reality to inform, whereas his phrases are harsh, they’re not all that removed from truthful.

Sadly, Erskine already is on shaky floor with Viscount David Brooke (a subtly expressive Mark Robust), who has just lately changed his deceased father as editor of The London Chronicle, and doesn’t share his excessive regard for Erskine’s flamethrower prose. Much more sadly, as is revealed extra step by step, Brooke, a straight-laced household man, has lengthy nursed a secret crush on Land.

However even that isn’t sufficient for Erskine to get the sack. It’s not till he and Tom are hassled by fascist Blackshirts throughout a late-night stroll on a London facet road, then arrested by policemen much more illiberal of overtly homosexual males – particularly homosexual Black males like Tom — that Erskine is given his discover. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t take his dismissal mendacity down, and searches for a option to persuade Brooke to rehire him.

“All males have secrets and techniques,” Erskine says. “I’ll discover his.” He finds precisely what he’s on the lookout for when he discovers Brooke’s regard for Nina, and craftily enlists her in his scheme to blackmail his as soon as and future boss. For her half, Nina is so insecure about her appearing potential, and so desirous to win Erskine’s approval, that regardless of her preliminary reluctance, she agrees to sleep with Brooke in alternate for career-boosting rave opinions from the critic. Nothing good comes from this.

Impressed by the novel “Curtain Name” by Anthony Quinn — not that Anthony Quinn, however the prolific writer who, no joke, was a movie critic from 1998 to 2013 for The Impartial — “The Critic” is cleverly structured as an interlocking chain of turnabouts, betrayals, unsettling revelations and surprising deaths. It’s as neatly contrived as a bed room farce, resulting in an ending as inevitable as one in a Greek tragedy, with an successfully ambiguous closing line to deliver down the curtain.

David Higgs’ noirish cinematography and Lucien Surren’s stable manufacturing design generously improve the interval taste, and the supporting gamers — together with Lesley Manville as Nina’s supportive however not completely uncritical mom — are well-cast and achieved throughout the board. Certainly, there actually isn’t a lot to criticize in “The Critic.” And on the subject of McKellen’s singularly excellent lead efficiency, the one appropriate response lies someplace between admiration and astonishment. Bravo.