Where is the connection between the joke and the criticism of the text? She is the most direct. In childhood, we do not know how to joke so that everyone would be funny. Because there is always a target for jokes - ridicule. This goal is another person, and a joke, most often, hurts his feelings. Strictly speaking, the ridicule that can be observed in schools is a poor parody of a joke. After all, everyone laughs at a good joke.

And what about textual criticism?

Anyone can criticize. Any person who takes the first text that comes across is able to smash it to pieces. Here the verb is not the same, here is a water word that can be easily removed, and there the author made a mistake. It looks like small bites, attacks, and not full-fledged criticism.

critics- a separate layer of people. Some criticize films, others criticize music, and others criticize books. I really don't understand how anyone can criticize a book. Therefore, I will not talk about "big" critics. We will talk about writers and copywriters working on the Web and "little" critics living in each of us.

In the world of web-writers, there is one interesting technique - selling criticism. The goal of a person using selling criticism is to attract attention to himself by analyzing the material of another author. The text may already be hanging on the sales page, but a wise critic appears and finds its problem areas.

By showing himself as an expert and establishing a business contact, the critic will receive an order, and the owner of the text will increase sales. Expert opinion is always valuable. But not everyone knows how to use criticism.

Selling text criticism - 7 reasons not to "bite"

When should you criticize a text? This is a valid question. You need to ask yourself it before you start scribbling your analysis of an article or a devastating book review. It is not always necessary to criticize, because you can give your own assessment.

The words "assessment" and "criticism" are synonymous. However, they have different meanings, in my opinion. Evaluation - I liked this and that, but I did not like this one, because ...

You can always give your opinion without asking. They wanted to write, they wrote. When the text is criticized, they turn it inside out, parse every word - because any criticism must be specific. Evaluation is always welcome, but an open analysis of the text is not always appropriate.

When is it better not to criticize a text:

• If the author did not ask for criticism, then there is no need to "dissect" his material. As a last resort, send your review to the author in private messages - it will be useful and correct.

This also works with selling criticism. You find a selling text and sell your services face-to-face. Just write how you can improve the text so that sales increase. Prove yourself as an expert and find a new customer. Entrepreneurs themselves often ask to criticize their site or text. Look for live forums of entrepreneurs and sell your expertise.

1. Do not find the real problem of the text. It seemed to the person that your remarks were slightly inflated - the expert does not make an elephant out of a fly. It's funny, but finding an elephant in the text is harder than a fly, but it also works better.
2. There is no justification for your opinion - there are no facts. Every person has their own opinion. It may not coincide with the opinion of the whole world. The opinion of one always loses to the opinion of the majority, so it is important to substantiate your opinion and back it up with facts.
3. You can't fit everything into one big message.. Brevity is extremely useful when it comes to criticism. Nobody likes to be criticized. The more accurately you express your thought, the easier it is to perceive and the less likely it is that you will be misunderstood.
4. No solution to the problem. Selling criticism is free, reasonable and clear advice on solving the found problem of the text. Having found the problem and rolled out the amount to solve it, you will act as an ordinary seller from the outside. Find two problems - solve one for free, and hint about the second.
5. You can't do without negative criticism. The entrepreneur, like the author of the text material, loves his text. You need to learn to criticize the text in a positive way, so as not to offend anyone, but to give useful advice.
6. There is no end goal. If you have wasted your time criticizing someone else's material for no purpose. For the sake of amusing one's vanity, why couldn't one limit oneself to one's assessment. Criticizing articles on blogs is criticism that works worse than constructive analysis of the material.

Is it possible to get customers with criticism in other areas? Yes it is possible. People react painfully to criticism and problems found. This is how 80% of businesses operate. The more real the problem, the higher the chance that a person will want to solve it with the help of your services.

Reader, thank you!

Anna Golubkova

Ankudinov, Shiryaev, Toporov, Arbitman and others: ANNA GOLUBKOVA on the state of affairs in the critical shop

It is now customary for us to scold literary criticism, and from absolutely all camps and practically from all literary positions. “We have no sane literary criticism,” say popular poets. “Oh, we don’t have adequate literary criticism,” very famous prose writers sigh after them. “We don't have competent literary criticism,” echo both publishers and editors of thick magazines. And in some ways they are all, perhaps even right. With only one small "but": all the speakers mean not at all that we really do not have literary criticism, but that there is no criticism that they would like. In the same way, when some well-known literary person remarks in an interview that we have no criticism, it simply means that critics either write little about this person, or write not what he would like to read about himself. Personally, in all these years, I have never come across the complaints of ordinary readers that they are terribly lacking in literary critical articles. For some reason, all claims to criticism and critics are expressed exclusively by writers who consider themselves underestimated and believe that literary criticism could fill this existential gap.

But to what extent can critical appraisal really affect the increase in literary popularity? What are the tasks of literary criticism in general? Before answering these questions, let's understand the content of the term.

In the article "Critic of the Russian decadence"a" ("Russian Word", 09/29/1909) V. V. Rozanov gave a completely exhaustive, albeit somewhat idealistic definition: "A critic is a rare creature to the point of exclusivity, even strange: he loves someone else's mind more than his own, someone else's fantasy more than his own, someone else's life more than your own.<…>The essence of criticism is the renunciation of oneself and one's own in literature. A critic is a monk who "doesn't have his own". The essence of criticism almost follows from a rare combination of the greatest susceptibility to the word and "sonorous combinations", from the greatest susceptibility to thought and its combinations - with complete impotence, impotence, impotence. When one rises to infinity and the other falls to zero, a great critic is born. He will digest, re-melt, remelt what is alien: a function that is rare and terribly needed in society, in history, in literature, for which almost no masters are born. Not born for this genius. We had one Belinsky. And eternal memory to him. Others, in essence, “imitated criticism”, but in essence were “writers themselves”. “The writer himself” is completely incompatible with criticism: these are not different vocations; these are vocations, of which one kills the other, upsets, poisons the other.

However, this statement denotes only one extreme point, although such an opinion is one of the most common. Until now, we believe that the critic is obliged to honestly get used to the work he is analyzing and, putting aside his own "I", write objectively, without anger and predilection. Of course, in reality, such altruism, as Rozanov correctly noted, is extremely rare. At the opposite pole is Oscar Wilde with his essay "The Critic as an Artist", in which criticism already appears as the highest art form. After all, both the writer and the artist deal with rough reality, while the critic deals with reality already transformed by art. In this interpretation, the critic himself must first of all be an artist, and, of course, no objectivity is required of him here. In this case, someone else's work acts only as material for their own artistic constructions (by the way, articles on the literature of Rozanov himself belonged to approximately this type of criticism). Between these two extreme points lies the whole variety of critical statements with their completely different forms, genres, author's motivations, the initial degree of education of the critic, his readiness to accept someone else's word and someone else's poetics, etc.>

The situation described above refers to the era of a hundred years ago, although in terminological terms, these definitions, in my opinion, are quite relevant now. In Soviet times, criticism was neither one nor the other, because it was the task of ideological leadership of literature that was assigned to it. Here - with the rarest exceptions - there was no place for any objective analysis, or at least some kind of self-expression. Criticism wavered along with the party line, and in one way or another tried to adjust all official literature to this line. Modern writers, and especially publishers, want critics to act primarily as PR people, while literary functionaries believe that critics, under their strict guidance, should be engaged in structuring the literary process. Does criticism fulfill these tasks? It can be said with complete certainty that it does not. PR is a very special area, which has little to do with criticism as such. We know of several successful literary PR projects, but in none of them did the critical component play any significant role. As for the structuring of the literary process, with very modest pay for critical work, none of the key figures that determine our literary climate has yet succeeded in getting critics to write the way they want and about whom they want. There are critics who are more loyal to these key figures, there are less, but on the whole, the entire critical community is for the most part amorphous, anarchic and lives its own separate life, and at some moments this life - almost according to Wilde - is very indirectly connected with modern literature.

There are, of course, editors of thick magazines who need criticism to fill in the relevant sections of their publications. In my opinion, it is the thick journals that we should be grateful for the fact that literary criticism is preserved in its traditional form - that is, in the form of a more or less objective article written in a neutral-emotional tone and stylistically consistent. Excessive scientism, as well as excessive essayism, from such articles, as a rule, is carefully expelled by editors. And in this, most likely, one can see a direct relic of the supposedly bygone Soviet era. This criticism is conventional not only stylistically, but also in the choice of object. And, thus, it fully reflects the hierarchical alignment of forces within the literary community, however, for the average reader, it is not at all interesting. From which a logical question arises: who reads this criticism and who needs it at all? I will answer this question a little later. In the meantime, I will say this: I do not think that the presence of such an island of literary respectability is a bad thing. In the end, before you deny the hierarchy, you first need to build it.

But next to thick magazine criticism with its rather rigidly defined stylistic norms, there are other noticeable phenomena. For example, there is philological criticism, which is actually quite close to a scientific article (this is a separate and completely separate genre). Alexander Zhitenev, Kirill Korchagin, Lev Oborin, Denis Larionov are very noticeable here. Criticism of this kind is often attacked because of its heavy "academic" style, but this, in my opinion, is no reason to deny it the right to exist. There is more essayistic criticism, and, oddly enough, it is also often written by philologists - Viktor Ivaniv, Oleg Dark, and even closer to actual prose are the critical experiments of Alexander Ulanov and Sergei Sokolovsky. Unusually successfully combines scientific solidity and essayistic ease of writing Alexander Skidan. You can list the actors and characters of the critical field for a long time, and I ask you not to be offended by those not mentioned - in the future I hope to dwell on this issue in much more detail and only then I will re-read and analyze everyone, no one will be left without attention, do not be afraid (or, conversely, be afraid) . Now I want to dwell on a few non-banal cases that go beyond the scope of both thick magazine criticism and glossy PR projects serving publishing houses.

Firstly, this is Kirill Ankudinov, in whose reviews the personal circumstances and biographical experience of the author are usually emphasized. The phrase “And we have “Oshten” in the litho”, it seems to me, has already become winged. In his articles and reviews, Kirill Ankudinov speaks from the position of a naive provincial reader who has mastered the school curriculum in literature very well and now diligently verifies everything that is written in thick magazines with it. And everything, in general, would be fine here, if not for one small inconsistency - after all, Kirill Ankudinov is not a naive provincial reader, but a candidate of philological sciences, whose knowledge, in theory, should be much more extensive than the Soviet school curriculum. Is his position as a naive reader sincere, or is it a well-played role? I really hope for the second, because in the first case we would have to give our higher philological education the lowest mark. A particularly great success of the critic is the confusion of two theoretical categories, because in order to give his articles an even more naive character, Ankudinov constantly describes literary classicism as romanticism, that is, he attributes to romanticism the structural features of classicism. This, of course, is the move of a true master.

The second example is Vasily Shiryaev, who is constantly published in the magazine "Ural" under the heading "Criticism out of format". This criticism is so outside the format that, apart from the Ural magazine, it is not yet in demand anywhere. Of course, if we consider Shiryaev's texts precisely as criticism, then many questions will immediately arise to them. And the main one is why a well-educated author, capable of the finest multi-level analysis, prefers frank and rather rude banter over literature in general and other critics to this analysis, that is, in fact, instead of working with jewelry tools, he hammers crutches into sleepers with a sledgehammer. But it seems to me that Shiryaev's articles and notes are not criticism, but rather postmodernist prose. Moreover, in my opinion, the author himself is not fully aware of this quality of his text. At the same time, the deconstruction of the entire modern literary and critical discourse is carried out by Shiryaev so skillfully and thoroughly that it is even strange why he has not yet been involved in the work of the Translit almanac. And this very image of a Kamchadal (how many literary parallels are there!), sitting in Kamchatka in his village of Vulkanny and sending his critical messages from there to the mainland, was chosen extremely well for this purpose.

If Vasily Shiryaev with his experiments can still be classified as a critical enfant-terrible, then the St. Petersburg critic Viktor Toporov cannot be called anything but a grandfather-terrible. It is interesting that this author went through a reverse evolution - usually the period of storm and onslaught falls on adolescence, but here the appeal to provocative writing occurred in mature years, so to speak. Gleb Morev in his old article called Toporov a gopnik critic. But not everything is so simple here, because Viktor Toporov read German expressionists and even translated them, at the very least, which a real gopnik, one must think, will never do. Nevertheless, Morev is right: Toporov masterfully uses the methods of communal squabbles, bringing to the public attention topics that are not customary to discuss in the public space. His scheme of work is not even devoid of a kind of psychologism: Toporov tries to find some sore points in the biography (not in the text!) of the author, mockingly beats them, putting them on public display and, if successful, enjoying the public suffering of the offended author's pride. However, this scheme also has its drawbacks - in cases where the object is more complicated or is not personally known to Toporov, it does not work. I think many will not agree with me, but I sincerely consider Viktor Toporov a brilliant literary feuilletonist. His articles are not conventional criticism (as an analyst of a text, especially a poetic one, Toporov is helpless to the point of comicality), but feuilletons, and very poignant ones, based on the material of modern literature. When Toporov tries to act in the field traditional for criticism, and especially to implement some kind of positive literary program, he does not achieve noticeable results. It is unlikely that anyone will immediately be able to recall Toporov's successful editorial projects (for me, they never existed at all). Both awards to which he is related - the noisy "National Bestseller" and the marginal poetic Grigoriev Prize - have acquired the shade of a café-chantan. The texts of the terrible grandfather, in which he sets out his positive program - no matter whether it is political or literary - are boring, monotonous and, in my opinion, do not go beyond the level of mediocre columnists. And only in the field of revealing literary feuilleton, you can’t argue with that, Viktor Toporov has no equal.

And finally, I cannot fail to mention the enchanting critic, the storm of the Saratov Union of Writers - Roman Arbitman, aka Lev Gursky, aka Rustam Svyatoslavovich Katz. On the one hand, nothing prevents Arbitman from publishing in thick magazines (he, in fact, publishes there quite often, completely fitting into the thick magazine style), on the other hand, the uncontrollable creative impulses of this critic sometimes lead to the violation of all and sundry conventions, and the fruits of this inspiration the author has to print separately. I will not recall the "History of Soviet Fiction", which has been misleading all lovers of this type of literature for many years (they say that lectures were even given on this book in some universities), I will only remember a small brochure "A look at modern Russian literature: A guide for the reader » (Saratov, 2008). This book consists of small critical notes in which the author parodies the stylistic manner of the authors under consideration. The preface ironically states that it is absolutely not necessary for an experienced reviewer to read the book - “it is enough to glance at the name of the author, the title, the cover”; here is Arbitman as R.S. Katz considers these covers. As a result, the review turns into a real work of art, also, by the way, not without a postmodern tinge. However, Arbitman's classic reviews also contain elements of artistic imagery - grotesque, hyperbole, absurd comparisons, which help him to reveal all the logical and stylistic absurdities of the text being parsed.

As we can see, even this very brief review proves that the situation with literary criticism is by no means as hopeless as it might seem at first glance. Of course, with any understanding of the term, one cannot abandon the link between literature and criticism, and in any case, both as an attempt at objective consideration and as an experience of subjective description, criticism always remains tied to modern literature. And although (I know from experience) it is impossible to write a good article about an insufficiently talented book, nevertheless, judging by the practice of Roman Arbitman and Vasily Shiryaev, there are appropriate ways to deal with works of this kind. It should also be noted that thick journals, again due to their poverty, only give some form to the chaotic critical movement, but hardly really guide it. Of course, editors always try to order reviews of the most significant, in their opinion, book novelties. But we must not forget that the editorial attitude must first of all coincide with the author's desire to write a review, and this does not always happen. In my opinion, under such conditions, no literary mafia can exist, because in the end, editors still have to deal with what is, and not with what they would like to publish.

In addition, we consider criticism to be a much less prestigious occupation than creativity itself, and the critic is something like a service staff, a kind of literary cleaner, who is obliged to rake up piles of garbage left by brilliant poets and prose writers. Accordingly, in contrast to genuine talents who flood the editorial offices with their immortal creations, the authors for some reason do not line up in the queue for the critical departments of thick magazines. Moreover, as I know very well from my own experience (and in both forms), in fact, it is not the critics who go and clean up the trash after the poets and prose writers, but the poets and prose writers very briskly run after the critics in the hope of getting at least some kind of review. And if nominally, the point of view set forth by Rozanov still dominates in our country, then in fact the situation is closer to that described by Oscar Wilde, that is, it is critics, along with editors and publishers, who are now a privileged literary layer.

And now about the most important thing - about who, after all, reads literary criticism in our country, since ordinary readers, apparently, are not at all interested in it. However, how many of these “simple readers” do we have, because there are only creative personalities around, only poets and prose writers?! So, these poets and prose writers just read criticism, and very carefully. And given their total number, it is safe to say that the readership of critics is quite extensive, in contrast to the same poets and prose writers. So, dear friends, if you want to have an audience, write criticism. Want to be refined aesthetes - write criticism. If you want to be heard - write criticism. Want to be in demand - write criticism. If you want to have weight and influence in literature, write criticism. After all, didn't Oscar Wilde say that we critics are the real artists?

And personally, I think he was absolutely right.

Criticism from the Greek "kritice" - to disassemble, judge, appeared as a kind of art form back in antiquity, over time becoming a real professional occupation, which for a long time had an "applied" character, aimed at a general assessment of the work, encouraging or vice versa condemning the author's opinion, as well as recommending or not the book to other readers.

Over time, this literary trend developed and improved, starting its rise in the European Renaissance and reaching significant heights by the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.

On the territory of Russia, the rise of literary criticism falls on the middle of the 19th century, when, having become a unique and striking phenomenon in Russian literature, it began to play a huge role in the public life of that time. In the works of prominent critics of the 19th century (V.G. Belinsky, A.A. Grigoriev, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev, A. V. Druzhinin, N. N. Strakhov, M. A. Antonovich) only a detailed review of the literary works of other authors, an analysis of the personalities of the main characters, a discussion of artistic principles and ideas, but also a vision and one's own interpretation of the whole picture of the modern world as a whole, its moral and spiritual problems, and ways to solve them. These articles are unique in their content and the power of influencing the minds of the public, and today they are among the most powerful tools for influencing the spiritual life of society and its moral foundations.

Russian literary critics of the 19th century

At one time, A. S. Pushkin's poem "Eugene Onegin" received a wide variety of reviews from contemporaries who did not understand the author's brilliant innovative methods in this work, which has a deep, genuine meaning. It was this work of Pushkin that was devoted to 8 and 9 critical articles of Belinsky's "Works of Alexander Pushkin", who set himself the goal of revealing the attitude of the poem to the society depicted in it. The main features of the poem, emphasized by the critic, are its historicism and the truthfulness of the reflection of the real picture of the life of Russian society in that era, Belinsky called it "an encyclopedia of Russian life", and an extremely popular and national work.

In the articles “A Hero of Our Time, M. Lermontov’s Work” and “M. Lermontov’s Poems,” Belinsky saw in Lermontov’s work an absolutely new phenomenon in Russian literature and recognized the poet’s ability to “extract poetry from the prose of life and shock souls with its faithful image.” In the works of the outstanding poet, the passion of poetic thought is noted, in which all the most pressing problems of modern society are touched upon, the critic called Lermontov the successor of the great poet Pushkin, noticing, however, the complete opposite of their poetic nature: in the first, everything is permeated with optimism and described in bright colors, in the second, on the contrary - The writing style is characterized by gloominess, pessimism and sorrow for lost opportunities.

Selected works:

Nikolai Aleksandro-vich Dobrolyubov

Well-known critic and publicist of the mid-19th century. N. A Dobrolyubov, a follower and student of Chernyshevsky, in his critical article "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom" based on Ostrovsky's play "Thunderstorm" called it the author's most decisive work, which touched upon very important "painful" social problems of that time, namely the clash the personality of the heroine (Katerina), who defended her convictions and rights, with the "dark kingdom" - representatives of the merchant class, distinguished by ignorance, cruelty and meanness. The critic saw in the tragedy, which is described in the play, the awakening and growth of protest against the oppression of tyrants and oppressors, and in the image of the main character, the embodiment of the great popular idea of ​​liberation.

In the article “What is Oblomovism”, dedicated to the analysis of Goncharov’s work “Oblomov”, Dobrolyubov considers the author to be a talented writer who acts as an outside observer in his work, inviting the reader to draw conclusions about its content. The main character Oblomov is compared with other "superfluous people of his time" Pechorin, Onegin, Rudin and is considered, according to Dobrolyubov, the most perfect of them, he calls him "insignificance", angrily condemns his qualities of character (laziness, apathy for life and reflection) and recognizes them as a problem not only of one specific person, but of the entire Russian mentality as a whole.

Selected works:

Apollo Alek-sand-ro-wich Grigoriev

A deep and enthusiastic impression was made by Ostrovsky's play "Thunderstorm" on the poet, prose writer and critic A. A. Grigoriev, who in the article "After Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm. Letters to Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev "does not argue with Dobrolyubov's opinion, but somehow corrects his judgments, for example, replacing the term tyranny with the concept of nationality, which, in his opinion, is inherent specifically for a Russian person.

Selected work:

D. I. Pisarev, the “third” prominent Russian critic after Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, also touched on the topic of Goncharov’s Oblomovism in his article “Oblomov” and believed that this concept very well characterizes a significant flaw in Russian life that will always exist, highly appreciated this work and called it relevant for any era and for any nationality.

Selected work:

The well-known critic A. V. Druzhinin in the article “Oblomov” by I. A. Goncharov drew attention to the poetic side of the nature of the protagonist of the landowner Oblomov, which causes him not a feeling of irritation and hostility, but even some sympathy. He considers the main positive qualities of the Russian landowner to be tenderness, purity and softness of soul, against which the laziness of nature is perceived more tolerantly and is regarded as a kind of protection from the influences of the harmful activities of the "active life" of other characters.

Selected work:

One of the famous works of the outstanding classic of Russian literature I.S. Turgenev, which caused a stormy public outcry, was the novel “Fathers and Sons” written in 18620. In the critical articles "Bazarov" by D. I. Pisarev, "Fathers and Sons" by I. S. Turgenev by N. N. Strakhov, and also by M. A. Antonovich "Asmodeus of Our Time", a sharp controversy erupted over the question of who should be considered the main the hero of the work of Bazarov - a jester or an ideal to follow.

N.N. Strakhov in his article “Fathers and Sons” by I.S. Turgenev" saw the deep tragedy of the image of Bazarov, his vitality and dramatic attitude to life and called him a living embodiment of one of the manifestations of the real Russian spirit.

Selected work:

Antonovich considered this character as an evil caricature of the younger generation and accused Turgenev of turning his back on the democratically minded youth and betraying his former views.

Selected work:

Pisarev, on the other hand, saw in Bazarov a useful and real person who was able to destroy outdated dogmas and old authorities, and thus clear the ground for the formation of new advanced ideas.

Selected work:

The common phrase that literature is created not by writers, but by readers turns out to be 100% true, and it is the readers who decide the fate of the work, on the perception of which the future fate of the work depends. It is literary criticism that helps the reader to form his personal final opinion about a particular work. Critics also provide invaluable assistance to writers when they give them an idea of ​​how clear their works are to the public, and how correctly the thoughts expressed by the author are perceived.

CRITICISM, -And, and.

1. Discussion, debriefing. in order to assess the merits, to detect and correct the shortcomings. Expand criticism and self-criticism. Be criticized. □ We need strict business-like criticism of people at work - both party and non-partisan. Kirov, Articles and speeches 1934. || Razg. Negative judgment about smth. His past is unknown. In the present - a disgruntled person who subjects everything to evil criticism. Novikov-Priboy, Submariners.

2. Research, scientific verification of the correctness of smth. Criticism of the text. Criticism of historical sources.

3. A special literary genre dedicated to the analysis of literary, artistic, scientific and other works. Literary criticism. Theatrical criticism. □ Criticism is the science of discovering beauty and flaws in works of art and literature. Pushkin, On Criticism. Teaching novice writers to write simply, clearly, competently is one of the duties of criticism. M. Gorky, On Literature.

4. collected Critics. In vain did criticism, using the power of the printed word, take a combative position in relation to the theatre; in vain she takes a great interest in the role of accuser. Stanislavsky, From notes on theater criticism.

5. Obsolete Critical article. When it [the poem] appeared in 1820, the magazines of that time were filled with critics more or less 131 indulgent. Pushkin, Preface to the 2nd ed. Ruslan and Lyudmila. "Oblomov" will undoubtedly cause a lot of criticism. Dobrolyubov, What is Oblomovism?

direct criticism- to criticize.
Does not stand up to (any) criticism; below all criticism- about smth. not meeting the most lenient requirements.

[From the Greek. κριτική - the art of disassembling, judging]

Source (printed version): Dictionary of the Russian language: In 4 volumes / RAS, Institute of Linguistics. research; Ed. A. P. Evgenieva. - 4th ed., erased. - M.: Rus. lang.; Polygraphic resources, 1999; (electronic version):

“Paul Feig, as you know, does not just direct female comedies, he corrects the gender of various entertainment genres in which males have traditionally been the soloists - spy thriller, buddy movie, fantastic comedy, comedy about an epic party.

Here the victim is, of course, film noir, with Feig making it clear (not very subtly) that he has watched not only Double Indemnity but also Clouseau's The Devils.

And it’s immediately clear that Kendrick’s character will be either a burdock who fell for the bait of a femme fatale, or her savior, or – as happened most often in these films – a burdock who naively considers himself a savior.”

Anton Dolin, Meduza:

“Director Paul Fig is the central figure of the new wave of Hollywood feminism, witty and aptly comprehending from film to film the place of women in modern society and the traditional system of film genres. His belated (Fig came to the big screen from TV series) feature debut Bachelorette Party in Vegas was a brilliant response to lewd "male" comedies about the loss of innocence. "Cops in Skirts" dealt with a police buddy movie, "The Spy" dealt with the James Bond myth, and "Ghostbusters" was the female shifter of the cult franchise of the 1980s. That picture did not seem entirely successful; Fig did not surpass the charm of the original source.

In A Simple Favor, he returns to his more familiar modern soil and is fully rehabilitated.

Framing first a psychological-comedy, and then a detective intrigue with issues of the blog "for mothers" allows us to generalize: Fig does not talk about femme fatales, his material is the complexity of any person as such, and especially women whom we are used to driving into a certain role.

Alisa Taezhnaya, "The Village":

“A Simple Favor director Paul Feig has been reimagining American mainstream comedy with Judd Apatow for the past decade: Bachelorette Party, Skirted Cops and the latest Ghostbusters are his work. The new film is rightly promoted at the box office as "a movie from the dark side of Paul Feig."

“A Simple Favor”, being a film without frontal jokes, handles the nature of the comic well: it contrasts Kendrick and Lively, who are different in charisma, jokes in passing about a hypocritical family, quotes “Gone Girl” and “The Girl on the Train” not without irony, and puts a sentence on people who are ready hang out for money.

Little things for which there is a catch to the eye, there are many scattered here. Request is more like a weird detective story from the 70s or 80s than a clichéd product of today's box office.

Denis Ruzaev, "Lenta":

“Pretending to be an action movie, Fighting without Rules is still a drama about survival in unbearable life circumstances, moreover, based on the best-selling memoir of the real Billy Moore. If Moore, however, naturalistically emphasized the exoticism of what he experienced in the Thai zone (it is not for nothing that his book is in great demand ten years after the release in all tourist bookstores in Thailand), then Jean-Stefan Sauveur, although he is known for films about the Colombian drug wars (“Medellin cartel") and African child soldiers ("Johnny the Mad Dog") takes an almost impressionistic approach to directing. The camera sometimes goes out of focus, once Billy finds and uses a dose, sometimes he manages to outline the space of freedom even in the inhuman crampedness of the Bangkok zone, and in the scenes of fights in the ring and training of their participants, he takes on an almost solemn, glorifying corporality intonation.

Ilya Knapsky, KinoPoisk:

“In the film, Sauveur is struck by the physicality of the tape: large strokes of cream slide down Moore's face before the fight; tattooed Thai backs constantly climb into the frame, trying to obscure all the action; blood gushing from the throat of the protagonist on the eve of a crucial match. Immersing the viewer in a trance with its almost documentary realism, “The Dawn Prayer” (original title of the film. — Approx. “Afishi”) fits well into the galaxy of the best modern prison films, such as, for example, David Mackenzie’s From Bell to Bell.

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter:

"London Fields" lures with a cast of top-notch stars and overwhelms with the huge difference in quality between the novel and its film adaptation. Music video director Matthew Cullen's debut is a complete failure from start to finish, grossing out Martin Amis' brilliant 1989 novel with the utmost care.<...>

The film fails so comprehensively to capture the marvels of Amis's prose that it is perhaps hardly worth examining its general defects in isolation.

However, we note only two obvious shortcomings that are not directly related to the novel itself. Firstly, the picture looks just monstrous, ranging from mediocre special effects to very rough work of production designers, which turns even luxurious places into something unsightly. Secondly, all performers play without any clear understanding.<...>Nicola [Six] for [Amber Heard] is one of the biggest creative challenges of her career, and all things considered, it wouldn't be entirely fair to blame Heard for not saving the movie despite her leading role, because she has no one in it didn't help."

Anna Kuzmina, kino-teatr.ru:

“The role of Nicola Six threatens to become the best role of Amber Heard, who demonstrated absolutely all facets of acting in this benefit performance: a beautiful ass, the ability to pose, an innocent look and a predatory grin. The role of a cold manipulator, skillfully inciting passion in men, sat down on the actress like a glove.

Guillermo Navarro's camera does not leave her sleek little face alone, admires her figure, pokes her neck in super close-ups.

The film pulls the viewer into itself, lulls the viewer into sleep, immerses in the text of the future book literally, showing huge, full-screen words on the flickering monitor of [writer Samson] Young's laptop, typing the novel simultaneously with the events he observes.