Jesse Eisenberg irks critics with fictional New Yorker film review

Hollywood actor Jesse Eisenberg has annoyed film critics after writing an article seen as a direct attack on their profession.

Jesse Eisenberg wrote the psuedo-review from the viewpoint of an apparently self-obsessed film critic. Picture: Getty

The star of The Social Network and Now You See Me wrote the piece for popular American magazine The New Yorker called An Honest Film Review.

The actor, writing in the guise of a film reviewer, pores over fictional film ‘Paintings of Cole’ by Steven Kern, which he apparently “didn’t like, because the press screening was all the way uptown, and there were huge delays on the J train.”

The article goes on to portray the critic as jealous of the film’s creator (“[it] pisses me off, because in grad school I wrote a short story with basically that exact idea. And I failed the grad-school class.”) as well as being driven by attraction to the screening intern and hurt by a failed job interview with The New York Times.

Eisenberg’s snarky article has caused waves in the film critic world.

Jason Bailey, film editor of Flavorwire tweeted: “It’s not ‘taking the bait’ or being hypocritical to voice displeasure when a smug asshole attacks your entire profession.”

Film critic Scott Tobias shared the article via Twitter, adding “Any lazy assumptions about film critics Jesse Eisenberg missed here? Looks like BINGO to me.”

In a chat with the Chicago Tribune, Eisenberg explained that the decision to do the article was influenced by recently working with Woody Allen:“I was just doing a Woody Allen movie, and someone showed me a review of his last movie,”

“The review said something along the lines of, ‘Woody Allen makes another movie. This one doesn’t really work, but hey, he’s doing one a year. Slow down, Wood-man.’ And I realized the guy was not criticising the movie. He was criticising his own lack of productivity and laziness, vis-a-vis Woody Allen’s productivity. But instead he was putting down the movie.”

Jesse had recently received some of the most scathing reviews of his career, for 2015 action comedy American Ultra, which may have fuelled his snarky assault.