The Critic

Plot synopsis:
Simple, abstract, geometric shapes move and morph on the screen to harpsichord music, from a French Suite (BWV 816) by J. S. Bach. The voice of an audience member, who claims to be 71, complains throughout the film despite being told repeatedly by other audience members to keep quiet.
The onscreen images feature geometric patterns. The "cranky and clueless" old man is trying to make sense of them, and describes what he sees at various points, including a squiggle, a fence, a cockroach. The old man finds that certain images remind him of the biology classes of his Russian boyhood. When two abstract shapes approach each other and unite, the old man sees it as a mating sequence. "...They like each other. Sure. Lookit da sparks. Two things in love!... Could dis be the sex life of two things?" 
When the scene shifts from the "mating" to other abstract images, the old man gets bored. He proclaims the images must be symbolism, then adds that they are symbolism of junk.
He eventually concludes that some of the images, depicting lips, are "dirty", obscene. He admits at some point that he was looking for "a hot French picture", which he hoped would involve nudity. The implication is that the old man is in the wrong movie theater, probably one screening art films.
He also wonders why the creator of the film wasted his time with this. He points that this creator could instead do something meaningful, like driving a truck, or do something constructive, like working in shoemaking.

Tags: satire

Review:
Please Add The Critic To The Next Brooks Feature Length DVD.
I saw The Critic in the mid-70's as a short before some comedy, and while I don't remember the movie it preceded, I'll never forget Pintoff's tiny gem of a film.
The v/o commentary that accompanies the very 60's-era (and very European) abstract animation is the funniest narration I have ever heard in any film -- long or short -- and nobody, NOBODY could have delivered it better than Mel Brooks.
The magic of the whole concept is that you truly do feel like the old geezer is sitting right next to you in the theater -- a masterful stroke of comedic/filmic genius.
It's a crying shame that The Critic appears to be out of circulation....
Why this is not in print is a mystery..
This short won the Academy Award for Animated Short and it deserved the prize!
This is marvelously funny and its unavailablity, given the stature of Mel Brooks and the success of his projects with Carl Reiner, is unfortunate and somewhat puzzling.
Ernest Pintoff's animation is largely unavailable and that's a shame, because he did some great stuff.
Well worth watching.
Most highly recommended to all of you wonderful people in the audience.
It's better than Saran Wrap!.
'Dis IS the Funniest Short of the Century!.
This short film by Ernest Pintoff is probably the funniest short ever made.
It stars Mel Brooks as an Old Man from Russia who watches a series of abstract cartoons.
He can make neither head nor tail of them, and comments outrageously the entire time, much to the disturbance of the other patrons.
Here is some of the earliest Brooks humor, and already it keeps your rolling in the aisles!
Produced in association with Brooks' Crossbow Productions (the precursor of Brooksfilms)..
"I'm 71, I got a right to be loud lady, I'm going to die soon!".
I was so glad I finally got to see this online (again, via you-tube), because it's an incredible shot of comedy from the sharp-as-a-Jewish-tack mind of Mel Brooks.
It's like Brooks stumbled into an avant-garde theater showing an underground short, like a slightly more sophisticated Brakhage short.
Which makes it all the more uproarious, because these sorts of films DO take themselves way too seriously as art sometimes (sometimes the symbolism is deep and meaningful, but other times, as Brooks's old man comments that it's meaning is junk).
We also get the insight that it's, of course, a "dirty picture" as he sees two amorphous shapes come together and "bond" in the ways that only abstract images from avant-garde filmmakers can do.
But of course the director Pintkoff is in on the joke too, and shapes his movie in order to suit Brooks's lashings, despite the 'others' in the theater that just want silence.
I think maybe a part of me just found it funny, in the first few minutes I mean, because it was Brooks doing such an over-the-top Russian caricature.
But there's many, many great zingers in there, the kind that provided me the same belly laughs I had from the classics the Producers and Blazing Saddles.
Though for some, since it's onlt 3 1/2 minutes long, there won't be much in the way of "story" to get in the way.
It's just a cranky old man fobbing off on 60s experimental film-making- and an old man that could criticize anything any day of the week and make hilarious!.
Hear hilarious Mel Brooks in The Critic.
After years of hearing of the short narrated by Mel Brooks as a very old man, I finally got to see The Critic on YouTube.
All that abstraction and Brooks as an 81-year-old Jewish man from Russia about to die soon has got me in stitches!
And that harpsichord music!
If you've only known Brooks as the co-creator of "Get Smart" or the director of such movie classics as The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankinstein, and Spaceballs (I know some might dispute the last title) or as the 2,000-year-old man with straight man Carl Reiner, then I highly recommend you seek out The Critic on YouTube and hope someone puts it out on DVD soon!
Also recommended to animation buffs especially Ernie Pintoff fans..
THE CRITIC {Short} (Ernest Pintoff, 1963) ***.
This Oscar-winning 4-minute cartoon beat the recently-viewed AUTOMANIA 2000 (1963), which I had rated ***1/2!
That said, it is a classic and undeniably original.
The premise could not be simpler: a grumpy critic on the soundtrack – voiced by a pre-stardom Mel Brooks!
– assesses a variety of shapes that come up on the screen.
He is understandably exasperated by their constant striving for attention or, if you like, to create meaning (which is often indecipherable anyway!) out of nonsense.
It is a pretty sharp and witty jab at art-house cinema, then in something of a worldwide creative peak, which found the adulation of intellectual film reviewers but were deemed pretentious by – and went over the heads of – mainstream American audiences.
Conversely, however, this can also be seen as an indictment of the unsophisticated tastes of casual moviegoers..
Great early Mel Brooks cartoon.
'The Critic' shows some sort of modern art cartoon, where figures move and change in all kinds of colours.
In the background we hear a man giving his ideas about what he sees, completely without a clue.
Apparently the man is old and from Russia.
The voice is from Mel Brooks.Although it is only three minutes long, it contains more laughs than many feature comedies made today.
Mel Brooks makes this cartoon hilarious.
It is funny to consider that quite some people were actually thinking, when it came to modern art like this, the strange things he says.
I highly recommend this Oscar winning cartoon..
Better than all today's critics.
I just turned 71 last week, I got a right to be loud.
I agree with everyone here.
This short is a must for today's audiences.The schmucks with their two-thumps up -- what?
and their five stars must be blocking its release.
Schmucks not spelled right?
The schmucks at Winipedia won't even tell you where the word comes from.
One should consult a moyel to know what to do with their opinions.
It could be IMDb blocking its release to cover all the messugass comments on the site.Then they say, you got to write a 1000 words.
I'm 71, I don't remember that many words.
Nem zich a vaneh!
Like a truth can't be expressed in less.
Try E=MC2.
What machines, won't even give me a little 2 for squared.
You call this progress.
Let people see the Critic!Put it on a DVD.
It will sell better than Pauline..
Mel Brooks comes to the silver screen.
Mel Brooks got his start writing for Sid Caesar's show, where he met Carl Reiner.* They collaborated on a skit about a 2,000-year-old man.
Brooks finally arrived on the big screen with "The Critic", in which he voices an old man watching a series of shapes and offering commentary.
I understand that MST3K's Kevin Murphy (voice of Servo) said that "The Critic" introduced him to the concept of riffing.
After all, who doesn't want to call out something that s/he finds pointless?
The cartoon won Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards (and Mel Brooks got married to Anne Bancroft not long after that, so it was a good year for him).
Since then, Brooks has become an EGOT and remains a comedy icon.
While "The Critic" is far more subdued than what we expect from him, it's still fun.
I recommend it.*When Reiner created "The Dick Van Dyke Show", he based Buddy on Mel Brooks..
great idea for a DVD.
It is an outrage that this and other certain animated features are not out on DVD yet!
May I suggest a DVD of the best of animated classic short subjects and cartoons which should include THE CRITIC and the Bugs Bunny classic cartoon MUGSY AND BUGSY just to name the two that instantly come to mind!
Others that may be provided on the same program would include RUFF AND READY, GERALD MCBOING BOING, TOM TERRIFIC, CRUSADER RABBIT, TENNESSEE TUXEDO, PENELOPE PITSTOP, GUMBY, MIGHTY MOUSE, HECKLE AND JECKLE, SUPERMAN, WOODY WOODPECKER, BETTY BOOP, FELIX THE CAT and DAVEY AND GOLIATH.
I realize some of these are claymation as well but why not if they're good!.
What an annoying little film--and it won an Oscar!?.
This is a truly unique film that you'll either love or hate.
Judging by my score, you can pretty much guess where I stand.
Oddly, it won the Oscar for Best Cartoon in 1964 and I am just assuming it must have been a very, very slow year for animation.Mel Brooks narrates as all kinds of shapes bounce about the screen (i fact, this is all you see during the film).
He talks like a cranky old man who loves to "kvetch" (yiddish for "complain") about the film.
It's basically like taking an old guy to an art film or modern art gallery and let him loudly proclaim how stupid this all is.
A funny idea--maybe.
But, after only four minutes, I was getting sick of the whole thing--listening to this mess was just a pain and beat the idea like the proverbial dead horse.Watch it for yourself and see--just don't be surprised if you, too, find the whole thing very tedious..
exactly, old man.
Exactly, old man, you have discovered that practically everything "cinematic" that the paid critics have praised is just nonsense.
"I'm 73 years old, I'm going to die soon," makes a good deal more sense than the abstractions on the screen; anyway the shushes and the hushes behind you don't hide the fact that "they can't show that," it would get them an NC-17 rating.
So funny it's simple; so simple it's funny.
Mel Brooks could actually have been a great comedic film maker..
Attribution at work..
A short, cute divertimento.
We see on the screen, in color, a series of abstract patterns, sometimes alone, sometimes interacting with other abstract patterns.
None of the images are realistic in any way -- just blobs and wavy lines.Then we hear the voice of "the critic" -- Mel Brooks as a seventy-one year old Russian Jew who shushes the audience members who try to shut him up by saying, "Leave me alone.
I'm seventy-one years old and I'm gonna die soon." The first words he utters are, "Vot da hell is dis?" And as the images come and go, he attributes personalities, temperaments, and motive to them.
As a triangle approaches a blob, he calls out, "Look out now!
Here it comes!
Uhh -- too late." When two dissimilar images begin to change and resemble each other, they're "in love." All of this cognition embodiment comes between his kvetching about having paid two dollars to see what he dismisses as "ah French movie." The first time I saw this in the theater, as a kid, I thought it was hilarious.
I convulse less now because I know so much more about Mel Brooks and what he's up to.
I doubt that he intended a nearly perfect illustration of a psychological approach to human understanding that's known as "attribution theory." Like Brooks' critic, we all are constantly investing meanings in events that may have no meaning at all.
Did you know that during the scandal involving President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Clinton wore yellow ties on TV that were actually sending signals to Lewinsky?
It was all over the news at the time.The movie is STILL charming, even on the third viewing..
Audio fun, visually unappealing.
"The Critic" is a 4-minute animated movie from over 50 years ago and a perfect example of how animation was really hitting rock-bottom in the 1960s after the Golden Years of Cartoon.
This film was directed by Ernest Pintoff, written by Mel Brooks and we also hear the voice of the star from "The producers".
Basically, Brooks gives us his critical approach on everything we see in this little movie, which is mostly strange shapes and colors.
Visually, this is a really bad movie, but with Brooks' voice elaborating sometimes even in a funny manner, it is still somewhat bearable.
Still far from being a good film and it's pretty ridiculous that this won an Oscar.
Not recommended.