Jesse Eisenberg angers film critics with short story

Jesse Eisenberg has risked the wrath of film critics by parodying their reviews in a short story.

In the piece, titled A Honest Film Review, which has been published in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine, The Social Network star writes from the perspective of a disgruntled, bitter reviewer who rates a fictional film badly because of personal issues.

He writes, "This week, I'm reviewing 'Paintings of Cole', which I didn't like, because the press screening was all the way uptown, and there were huge delays on the (subway)... The movie... p**ses me off, because in grad school I wrote a short story with basically that exact idea... And (the movie's writer) is getting early Oscar buzz. Justice? Not in this life... Nonetheless, 'Paintings of Cole' is easily the best movie of the year. I'm saying this only in the hope that the studio might print my name after a blurb on the movie poster. And I've always wanted to have my name on a movie poster."

During a question-and-answer event on Tuesday (17Nov15), Jesse explained the motivation behind his parody: "Good critics are not bringing their own personal gripes. I was just doing a Woody Allen movie and somebody showed me a review of his last movie and it said something along the lines of 'Woody Allen makes another movie, he's doing one a year... slow down Woodman' and I realised the guy was not criticising the movie, he was criticising his own lack of productivity and laziness... but instead he was putting down the movie... That's why I had the idea."

Film critics have since taken to Twitter.com to respond to the piece, with Camilla Long from Britain's Sunday Times, writing, "Geesh (sic), Jesse Eisenberg is extremely bitter about *something*. But lacks the b**ls to say what."

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw has even penned an article about Jesse's story, writing, "Huh? Wha...? (sic) What did we do? By and large, movie actor and author Jesse Eisenberg has been well-liked and even rather loved by the critics... Sadly, this week we realised that our feelings for him are very far from reciprocated."