Like you, I do not readily see what your reviewer was on about ... your approach superficially seems like a good and clever one to me.   However, I would proceed to ask the reviewer what s/he meant.

Intuitively, I would construct the function-call that you pass around as a closure, which Perl supports very well.   Now, the function-reference that you are passing around will invoke the desired function complete with its arguments.

And yes ... “profile it.”   If the code that you have written “ran fine,” and if you can demonstrate that it will continue to do so under actual load, then that ... to me ... is a pretty darned powerful argument in favor of what you have presently done.   If the code as-written consumes an inconsequential amount of microseconds and megabytes, that’s another feather for it.   Nevertheless, the first person with whom I would discuss the matter ... and, listen very carefully ... is the colleague who gave a dissenting review.   Presume that s/he sees something.