Taika Waititi's cameo appearance in the most recent episode of The Simpsons has drawn criticism from one US website, who said it reinforced the perception the director's work is "self-indulgent, smug, and self-congratulatory".
Waititi appeared on the episode Murder, She Boat, where Lisa must solve the "murder" of a million-dollar action figure belonging to Comic Book Guy on a pop culture cruise.
The Kiwi director is a guest on the cruise ship and springs into action to help Lisa solve the crime when Comic Book Guy's toy is stolen.
A starstruck Lisa is surprised the fictional Waititi wants to help, to which Waititi responds: "Of course. Why? Because I have a medical condition where I have to be multi-tasking at all times".
Lisa then says it couldn't just be her brother Bart that hated Comic Book Guy, so they'd need to start questioning passengers. Waititi said: "Why don't we start with fans of the Taika-verse? Whoops, that's everyone", before breaking into laughter.
He also later talked about his "huge pile of money" and said a movie looked so good that he couldn't believe he didn’t direct it.
The cameo has come under fire by US website ScreenRant, who said it only reinforced the perception the director's work is "self-indulgent, smug, and self-congratulatory".
While they enjoyed the plot line of the episode, they said "Lisa pairing up with Waititi to solve the crime was what facilitated most of the unfortunate gags about how wonderful he is and how successful he considers himself".
They also wrote the director's cameo "ended up feeling like a cringeworthy misstep" and suggested Waititi's reputation with the public was falling.
Not all were unhappy, however, with one comment on X (previously Twitter) saying they loved Waititi: "That was a fun episode".
His latest film, Next Goal Wins, has a poor critic score of 43% on Rotten Tomatoes from 125 reviews, although audiences rated the film at 85%, based on over 100 verified reviews.
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