Let V ⊂ C n be an equidimensional algebraic set and g be an n-variate polynomial with rational coefficients. Computing the critical points of the map that evaluates g at the points of V is a cornerstone of several algorithms in real algebraic geometry and optimization. Under the assumption that the critical locus is finite and that the projective closure of V is smooth, we provide sharp upper bounds on the degree of the critical locus which depend only on deg(g) and the degrees of the generic polar varieties associated to V. Hence, in some special cases where the degrees of the generic polar varieties do not reach the worst-case bounds, this implies that the number of critical points of the evaluation map of g is less than the currently known degree bounds. We show that, given a lifting fiber of V , a slight variant of an algorithm due to Bank, Giusti, Heintz, Lecerf, Matera and Solernó computes these critical points in time which is quadratic in this bound up to logarithmic factors, linear in the complexity of evaluating the input system and polynomial in the number of variables and the maximum degree of the input polynomials.