Wall Street Journal Film Critic Confuses Dev Patel For Kal Penn

A film critic for the Wall Street Journal made an error of epic proportions when he mistook Dev [...]

By Hunter Miller

A film critic for the Wall Street Journal made an error of epic proportions when he mistook Dev Patel for Kal Penn in a review for the movie Lion.

While both Dev Patel and Kal Penn are of Indian descent, they have had drastically different film careers. Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) is a 26-year-old from London while Penn (Harold and Kumar) is a 39-year-old actor born in New Jersey.

The WSJ writer, Joe Morgenstern, wrote in his review that Dev Patel's role in Lion was his best performance since 2006's The Namesake. However, Patel wasn't actually in the film directed by Mira Nair, it was Kal Penn.

After seeing the mistake, many social media users online voiced their outrage. One person on Twitter asked whether Morgenstern meant "the other brown actor."

Since the time of the publication, the Wall Street Journal has released a correction of the online review that reads, "An earlier version of this article misidentified Dev Patel as appearing in Mira Nair's 'The Namesake.'"

Morgenstern responded to the mistake on Twitter. When someone tweeted at him asking if he realized that Dev Patel was not Kal Penn, Morgenstern tweeted: "@EzraCubero @WSJ I do. What a dumb error."

The Wall Street Journal film critic's movie review of the film was posted on Wednesday afternoon. Despite mixing up the two Indian actors, Morgenstern did give Patel a glowing review for his performance.

While the print version of the story still contains the unfortunate error, the online edition of the story has since been corrected.

To check out Joe Morgenstern's review of Lion in which he mixed up Dev Patel with Kal Penn, go here.

Lion is set for a limited released this weekend from the Weinstein Co. Dev Patel has been in the conversation for the best-supporting actor race in the film.

Patel recently dished on the inspiration behind doing the film. "The greatest influence in my life has been my own mother, so when I read this, I knew I was gonna do this film for her," he said.

How do you think Dev Patel and Kal Penn will react to seeing that the Wall Street Journal confused them for one another?

[H/T Variety, The Hollywood Reporter]

0comments
Start the Conversation

of