"Going to the movies?" Diana says as he walks into the living room. She barely even looks up from the glowing computer screen.

"I wish you wouldn't call it that," he says. "It's my job."

"You act like it's such a burden. Why be a movie critic if you don't like the movies?"

"I never said I don't like film. I just don't find a lot worth watching these days."

"Why not sit back and enjoy the show? That's what I do."

"Want to come along? I can bring a guest."

"What's playing?"

"Nothing I've heard of. Some independent film--first-time director, I think. It's called 'The Critic.'"

"No thanks. I'll stick with the Internet. There's a guy on this message board who has a fascinating perspective on 'Mars Attacks.'"

"'Mars Attacks' was an awful movie. It had no plot."

"I liked it. Tim Burton is a genius."

"No, Albert Einstein was a genius."

"You'll enjoy this critic movie, won't you, Brian?"

"Very funny."

"I know. See you this evening."

"Bye." He grabs his keys off the coffee table and walks out of their fashionable townhouse in a somewhat-fashionable suburb and backs his not-so-fashionable powder blue Chevy out onto Orchard Sunset Lane and drives away in silence. He wishes Diana had come along; afterwards they could have gone out for coffee and laughed about what was sure to be an amateurish mess of a film, edited on somebody's PC and starring the director's drinking buddies. But he'll laugh alone just as well.

The screening room is uptown in a high-rise office building, tiny and cramped and decorated in a saccharine shade of peach that makes his teeth ache. Apart from the projectionist who checks his ID and takes his ticket, no one else is in sight. That's unusual; even screenings for small-time films typically garner a few magazine columnists and the critic for the competing paper in town. He takes out his Steno pad and his pen with the little light mounted on it and waits.

But five minutes later the lights go down on a theatre empty except for him, and the rattle of the projector and the slam of the exit doors startle him out of thoughts of Scorsese's latest. Two words appear on the screen, and he switches on the little light and writes them down in slender, slightly messy cursive. "The Critic."

The movie opens with a shot of a little boy sprawled on a living room rug. The TV in front of him displays the final moments of a cheesy horror movie. It doesn't seem to frighten the kid at all; his eyes are wide and bright, his face full of gleaming astonishment. As the credits roll, he turns to the woman on the sofa behind him and says, "Mom, when I grow up I want to watch movies."

She laughs and says, "Whatever you want, Brian."

He looks away for a moment to write, "Opening scene--cliché. 'When I grow up I want to watch movies.' Kid named Brian, same as me!"

The kid is the only child of middle-class parents in a normal small town. For awhile there seems to be nothing interesting about him. He's a good student with a few friends, the kind of kid you forget even as you speak to him. "Bland main character. Plot not apparent yet. Does this movie have a point?"

The movie skims over that part of the kid's life, realizing how dull it is. He grows up on screen--gradually, believably, so smoothly that it's impossible to tell where the director switched actors. "Brian ages seamlessly--impressive. Wonder how many actors it took to pull that off?" If anything, he becomes more typical as he ages, remarkable only in his passion for the movies.

There is a long montage of the kid going to movies, first riding his bike to the Hollywood downtown, then being dropped off at the multiplex on the highway after the town theatre goes out of business, later driving there himself with a date or a carload of friends or alone. And all the while ten years of cinematic history flashes by on the marquee..."Movie going montage beautifully conceived and executed. A visual tour de force, even if the plot is still out to lunch. Reminds me of my childhood."

Soon the kid is at a large state university, studying journalism. In the audience he sees the kid meeting his roommate, an oddly familiar guy named Paul Tarquin, and suddenly he knows exactly where the film will go. Paul, who enjoys movies more than anyone the kid has ever met, will introduce him to other film buffs, actors, aspiring directors. They will read the screenplays the kid has written out of sheer love for the movies and will love them. They will want to film his scripts and will spend evenings and weekends running around campus with Super 8s and camcorders or discussing special effects over pizza and beer. He is shocked yet unsurprised to see it all unfold on the screen before him.

The kid and his friends make movies and plans. They will finish college, get degrees in case things don't pan out--but with the hopeful arrogance of twenty-year-olds, they know things will. They'll go to Hollywood together, send their films around, wait until someone discovers their genius and makes them rich and successful beyond their wildest dreams.

But a funny thing happens. As he sits through journalism classes, film classes, criticism classes, the kid finds himself changing. He looks at movies with a critical eye now, seeking out ways to improve them, discovering flaws he couldn't recognize before. When he goes behind the camera with his friends he tries to pretend that it's still the same, but soon he can't. He makes suggestions nonstop, points out continuity errors, rewrites clunky dialogue, sews up gaping plot holes. At first his friends appreciate it. Then they get angry. "My God, Brian!" says Paul one memorable day, after the kid has unleashed a scathing critique of their current project's preposterous plot. "We do this because it's fun, not because we want to make 'Citizen Kane.' Don't suck all the joy out of it."

"There's no joy in making a bad film," the kid replies. A few weeks later he and Paul are no longer on speaking terms.

The kid starts writing movie reviews for the university newspaper. He trashes a lot of well-liked movies, spurring a lot of biting letters to the editor. He doesn't care; he remains secure in the knowledge that his tastes are far more refined than those of the general populace.

He stops writing screenplays, though. When he works on them he finds himself already planning a vicious review of his own work in his head, tearing it apart for its banality. For awhile he tries to push through it, but one day he simply accepts that he's no good at making movies and should leave it to people with talent. So he sells his camcorder and stops hanging around with his filmmaker friends. He finds that he doesn't miss them much.

When it comes to reviews, the kid is good. He can rip a film to shreds without wasting a word. He doesn't have to look far after graduation to find his movie critic job with a major paper in a neighboring state. He becomes a productive member of suburbia, a busy man with a reputation for being hard to please. He makes a lot of people mad; they call him at all hours and send him profane emails. Yet week after week they read what he has to say.

And Diana. Diana whom he met at an independent film festival, Diana who never met a movie she didn't love, Diana who once said she would sit through all the Ishtars and Titanics and Heaven's Gates of the world as long as he was with her in the audience. Drifting away from him now, Diana, finding people who are whole like her, whose hope hasn't been killed by seeing too many dreamers destroy the thing they love most. He has begun to notice something weakening between them; now he knows it is only something missing inside him. He has lost his capacity for wonder, and he fears it's too late to get it back.

He knows it's almost over when he sees his own car driving to the screening, sees the lights go down and the film begin and end with that same prophetic line: "When I grow up I want to watch movies."

There are no credits, only a slow fade to black and a click as the projector shuts off and the lights come up by dim degrees. He shouts to the empty theatre, "Hey! That's all there is?" But of course no one answers.

He looks at the scattering of notes he has taken and shakes his head at their sparseness. It doesn't matter; he doubts many people will want to see this film, so his review won't have to say much. He begins to reread what he has written, but halfway through he looks up at the vacant room and the blank movie screen as thoughts float through his mind. The lights are at full, the projector is already dark and silent in the booth, yet he stays in his chair for a moment longer and scribbles, "An interesting premise marred by sloppy execution and a confusing, uncertain finish. No message or theme to speak of. Ultimately meaningless." Then he snaps the Steno notebook shut and walks through the open door, his terse footsteps echoing off the screaming peach walls. He has a review to write.

Copyright (c) 2000 by Beth Kinderman. This is my original work, so please respect it.