If you want to give a great actor a role he can sink his teeth into with almost unseemly glee, there can’t be many better ways than to cast him as a critic in a period melodrama. That, at least, seems to be the idea behind “The Critic,” Anand Tucker’s tale of a nefarious theater reviewer in 1930s London starring Ian McKellen as the kind of awful person who must have been a lot of fun to play.
It is not, perhaps, a role that would challenge the magnificent McKellen much, but who needs a challenge when you can spit out viciously witty bon mots while wearing fancy duds and being lit at all times for maximum dramatic effect? And while McKellen’s Jimmy Erskine is a villain to remember, he isn’t a one-dimensional baddie.