ReView Askew: Mallrats (1995)

As Clerks became a quiet hit at festivals, Kevin Smith had a golden opportunity to pitch a new project to interested studios. He basically sold the idea of Mallrats as “Clerks but in a mall,” which was a pretty smart angle to take for his next film. You want to give interested producers more of what they responded to the first time around, but on top of that, this was Smith’s chance to take what he did with Clerks and reshape it for a wider audience. Since Clerks only played to a small amount of theaters, a lot of people seeing Mallrats likely wouldn’t be familiar with it, so Smith was free to create a sort of spiritual successor to Clerks. Continuing the creative mindset of writing what you know, Smith jumped from the Quick Stop to the mall, the other major hotspot for his Jersey friends. With big studio resources behind him, Mallrats would be his chance to bring his unique voice to a mainstream comedy, but unfortunately, the film kind of ends up feeling like Kevin Smith making a regular dumb mainstream comedy.

Along with Chasing Amy, I only watched Mallrats once back in high school, and even at that sophomoric young age, I didn’t find much appealing about it. And rewatching it now, I completely see why. Mallrats feels like a big studio comedy version of Clerks, but in all the worst ways, with the tone, the humor, and the soul of Smith’s premier film reduced to its most superficial forms, leaving us with a cast of uninspired caricatures, slapstick and scatalogical humor, and a supreme lack of a meaningful narrative. It honestly feels more like someone cynically trying to make a Clerks-esque comedy than a film made by Kevin Smith himself. Following a critical examination of the listlessness of young adulthood and the inner turmoil inherent within comes a movie that’s an unabashed celebration of being a shitty, selfish, and juvenile overgrown teenager. I imagine that demographic probably ate this film up for that very reason (and they did, as Mallrats became a cult classic on video), but watching it now as an adult in 2022, I find it really difficult to see how anyone without nostalgia blinders could get a kick out of this.Mallrats features two new twenty-something slackers to stand in the big shoes left by Dante and Randal. We first meet T.S. (no idea what that stands for, and don’t care to look it up), getting ready to take his girlfriend Brandi down to Florida, only to find she’s not going. Her father is producing a live taping of a new dating game show at the mall, and she volunteered to sub in for the eligible bachelorette last minute, due to the sudden death of would-be contestant Julie Dwyer (the woman whose funeral Dante and Randal would attend days later). Knowing Brandi’s father hates him, T.S. blows up, thinking this whole thing is a scheme to break them up, upsetting Brandi, leading her to break up with him herself. Meanwhile, Brodie, an absolute loser living in his mom’s basement, wakes up with his main squeeze Rene, and immediately pushes her aside to continue his Sega Genesis hockey match. Realizing she doesn’t have much of a future with a man who’s too scared to introduce her to his own mother, Renee dumps his ass. The two best friends meet up later that morning, and upon realizing their mutual tales of woe, Brodie proposes they go to the one place they can turn their entire day around: the local mall.

T.S. is more or less our Dante, the straight man of the duo, lamenting about his hopeless romantic situation. He’s played by Jeremy London, coming off of an NBC drama I’ve never heard of (I’ll Fly Away) and just before he’d reach more notoriety in the supporting casts of Party of Five and 7th Heaven. He’s also curiously one of the very few main cast members of a Kevin Smith movie to not appear in any future films, but that’s not really a problem since he’s very forgettable here, getting completely overshadowed by his co-star. He’s just very milquetoast, which I guess would suit him perfectly fine for his primetime drama work, but in an irreverent screwball comedy such as this, he feels almost out of place. I don’t want to be too hard on London, and I also don’t have much else to flesh out this paragraph with, so I’ll just share this bizarre tidbit I learned off his Wiki page (In June 2010, Jeremy alleged that he was involved in a bizarre kidnapping, approached by a group of men in Palm Springs, CA, and forced to drive around for 12 hours purchasing alcohol and using drugs. Though he swore the incident was real, his mother and brother made public statements doubting the events. Jeremy filed a restraining order against them, only to have it denied by a judge.)
Brodie is definitely our Randal, the more proactive member of the duo, the wise cracker, the instigator. Here’s a big problem though: he’s fucking awful. I spent a lot of the film squinting charitably trying to find something likable about the guy, but it was pretty difficult to do. He has no interests outside of comic books and video games, nor any sort of aspirations in life, which I guess is sort of the point, given he just likes wandering around the mall and snarking at everybody who crosses his path. But if one of the main characters in your movie doesn’t want anything, and isn’t working towards anything, then why am I watching them? Unlike Dante, a man who felt almost suffocated by his own inability to make decisions, Brodie just has absolutely nothing going on. The only real plus is that he’s played by Jason Lee, here in his first acting role. He definitely has an on-screen presence, and he fully commits to the character, even scoring a few chuckles out of me, but he can only do so much to save the abhorrent role as written on the page.

No matter how annoying and awful his words and actions might be, we’re supposed to relate to Brodie, supposedly. Beyond that, the world of the movie embraces him just the way he is as well. Our final set-piece has T.S. and Brodie smuggle their way onto the “Truth or Date” game show (along with contestant #3 Gil Hicks, Dante’s cousin, played by Brian O’Halloran). Brodie quickly wins over the crowd, who laugh at him insulting Gil and making random quips. They’re later captivated by a long joke he tells about a plane going down and all the passengers start furiously masturbating. It’s really baffling watching this audience go ape-shit over Brodie, it’s like watching a foreign film where you don’t comprehend the reactions because you don’t understand what’s being said. The public access producers of the game show approach Brodie at the end because of how damn funny he is, and in the Animal House-style epilogue, we see he eventually became the new host of The Tonight Show. Of course he did, that Brodie is just a hoot and a holler, isn’t he?
The girlfriend characters are just complete nothings, falling in line with the standard female roles of basically all teen comedies of the 90s and 2000s. I couldn’t tell you one thing about Rene and Brandi. Rene has a bit of an edge to her, and Brandi is nice, I guess? Brandi only reappears towards the end of the film, but we see more of Rene throughout, as Brodie harangues her about their break-up. We get two scenes of her talking about how shitty and selfish he is, how their relationship was primarily catered to doing things he wanted to, mostly comic-related, and other primo nuggets like forcing her to sleep under his bed in case his mother barged into his room after prom, or telling guests at her grandmother’s funeral that he could see the deceased’s nipples through her blouse. Brodie just sounds like an absolute nightmare of a partner, yet we’re supposed to feel great when they get together at the end. Similarly, Brandi has a similar confrontation with T.S. toward the end of the film, rightfully pointing out that he did absolutely nothing to try to mend their relationship, and he didn’t even try to comfort her about their mutual high school friend’s death. But they just love those two knuckleheads no matter what bullshit they pull, and that’s all that matters (in a totally-aged-well line, Rene sighs, “What can I say? I love the retard.”) The girls are nothing more than trophies for our heroes to win back at the end.

To Brodie’s horror, Rene has fallen into the clutches of the manager of a preppy clothing store Shannon Hamilton, played by Ben Affleck in a very early role. The first thing you notice when he shows up on screen, and it’s slightly difficult to tell from that screenshot, is he’s wearing clothes that are like two sizes too big. It’s really bonkers. His suit jacket and pants are just billowing off of him, it’s like he stepped out of a David Byrne video. Who dressed him like that? It’s not part of his character. But I digress, Shannon is our villain because he actually wines and dines women rather than ignore them until you get the urge to stick your dick in something, but he’s also kind of a huge asshole, so I guess it’s supposed to even out. The movie kind of has a “snobs vs. slobs” angle, with Shannon as the put-together employed guy in a suit and Brodie as the do-nothing slacker, which paired with the simplistic depiction of the male and female characters makes it all feel perfectly tailored to a 14-year-old audience, a world where the quirky losers beat the big bad adults to get the girl. Also, Rene says Shannon got them tickets to the opera, which is the most stereotypical “I’m a serious adult” thing you could possibly write in a script.
Brodie enlists the help of two familiar faces to sabotage the “Truth or Date” event, Jay and Silent Bob, who spend the movie getting into various shenanigans trying to destroy the game show stage and evade the mall cops. Contrasting their appearance in Clerks as two burnout loiterers acting as minor annoyances to the protagonists, Jay and Bob have been elevated to wacky side characters, with Jay mapping out their master plans on schematics like Wile E. Coyote, and Bob falling victim to their botched plans and prat falling with cartoon sound effects. We’re also introduced to a new litany of catchphrases from Jay, with “Snoogans” and “Snootchie bootchies” ready to sweep the nation. The duo’s roles would be reshaped slightly in the future depending on what film they were in, which I think is pretty cool in concept, but they’re just not as amusing to me this time around, even though Jason Mewes is game as ever, as is Kevin Smith, getting into a lot more physical action than in Clerks. Silent Bob ends up saving the day in the end, “perfecting” his Jedi mind trick he spends the entire film practicing. It’s weird to think of how novel referencing Star Wars in a movie was back then. This predates the special editions of the trilogy being re-released in theaters, so these jokes cater exclusively to like-minded nerds obsessively watching the movies on videotape, a much different case than today.

The whole movie almost feels like it’s going for a live-action cartoon feel, with exaggerated sound effects used throughout, and fantastical shit like Silent Bob’s grappling hook actually working to aid he and Jay’s escape. But it doesn’t feel like it goes far enough, especially compared to Smith’s future film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which fully embraced being a nonsensical comedy. Instead, Mallrats is left an uneven blend of the conversational Clerks dialogue-heavy comedy, and the sillier, more simplistic and visceral physical comedy. But then sometimes we’re supposed to take it seriously; while you have stuff like T.S. accidentally elbowing Joey Lauren Adams in the breast, followed by her socking him in the nuts, and Jay and Bob beating up the Easter Bunny, we also have Shannon confronting Brodie in a back alley and actually beating him up in a moment that’s supposed to be played for drama. And yes, you can make that tonal shift even in a more light-hearted comedy such as this and still have it work, but it doesn’t really here, since Shannon doesn’t feel like enough of a big threat in the movie for this moment to feel impactful.
The broad nature of the comedy extends to a lot of the side characters we meet in the mall.
Early on, we meet Willem Black, who is tortured by not being able to make out the picture in a Magic Eye poster, a gag that’s lightly amusing the first time, and very quickly wears out its welcome. The aforementioned Joey Lauren Adams shows up to strip in changing rooms only to have Silent Bob smash through the walls twice, very funny stuff. Finally, we also have Trish “the Dish,” a savvy 15-year-old senior with a cash advance on a book deal about the sexual drive of men ages 14-30. So, yeah, lots of statutory rape going on, which is a great topic for comedy. She plays a pivotal role in the finale, providing video evidence of her sexual encounter with Shannon, who screwed her in “a most uncomfortable place” (a refrained terminology for anal sex used throughout the movie, to which multiple characters respond, “You mean in the back of a Volkswagen?”, which may be the dumbest running joke of all time). The footage gets put up on the mall big screen, which leads to Shannon’s arrest. Also in the epilogue we see that he ends up getting fucked in jail. Oh boy, a double count of anal rape, one of which involving an underage girl. What a funny ending for a wacky comedy film!

There’s also a fair amount of crude humor, making this feel closer to a gross-out 2000s comedy. And yes, Clerks had its fair share of blue humor, but it definitely felt much smarter than the stuff going on here. There’s the memorable chocolate-covered pretzel bit, where Brodie graciously shares his tasty snack secretly coated in his fecal matter with Brandi’s father Jared (played by Michael Rooker). The pretzels have gotten a little melty, so we’re treated to close-ups of Jared licking his brown fingers clean with disgusting sucking and squishing noises. Later, at their lowest point at the local flea market, T.S. and Brodie visit a “topless psychic,” a woman who gives them spiritual guidance by groping her breasts, and, upon disrobing, she’s revealed to have a third nipple, which causes Brodie to come close to vomiting (not really sure why). Then after the boys leave, she peels the nipple off, revealing it to be a fake, then ends the scene by putting it in her mouth for some reason? Sure, Clerks had discussions of jacking off in “nudie booths” and a prominent shot of a dead man’s erection, but the similar kinds of gags here just feel so much more crass and uncreative.Similar to name-dropping Star Wars, the comic book stuff in this movie also feels like a bizarre time capsule, with Brodie being looked down upon by “regular” people for his obsessions with the likes of Spider-Man and the Hulk. Nowadays, Marvel (and to a smaller extent DC) rule our pop culture media landscape, and discussions about superheroes are pretty much fair game for anybody. It’s very curious how much things have changed. Speaking of which, this movie features a guest appearance by Stan Lee, future king of the cameo. He was promoted to be signing comics at the mall comic shop early in the film, then in the third act he “magically” appears to help guide Brodie to get Rene back, even though all Brodie wants to do is fanboy over him and ask questions like is The Thing’s cock made out of rock too. It’s probably one of the only scenes in the movie I mostly enjoyed, just because it was fun seeing Stan Lee get a full scene and dialogue to himself, and he was just a naturally charming presence. There’s a pretty big false equivalency though, where Stan weaves (LIKE A SPIDER) his own story about a woman who left him because he was too focused on comic books, just like Brodie… except he was actually making comic books as his profession, unlike Brodie who’s just sitting on his ass doing nothing but reading them.

The “Looking Back on Mallrats” featurette from the DVD featured a lot of discussion about the negative critical reception of the film (as well as interviews from a few critics themselves), marking the origin point of Kevin Smith’s career-long (mostly) playfully scornful relationship with critics. The base impulse of their critiques pretty much mirror my own, in expressing disappointment at the direction Smith took into his sophomore outing after such a hopeful and original first film with Clerks. Granted, I can see why critics of an older generation wouldn’t be super keen about a movie with stink palms and talking about Superman’s super-powered jizz, but I’m by no means opposed to this genre of humor. There’s plenty of movies and shows that dip into vulgar humor that I unabashedly love, but the stuff in Mallrats just feels so surface level, like any of these bits and jokes could have been plucked out any crappy outrageous comedy of the time. Smith can do better than this. It doesn’t seem like there was much studio interference with this, or if this was Smith actively trying to write a more traditional comedy, but what we ended up with just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll preemptively say that this is my least favorite View Askewniverse film, and I’ll be really surprised if something dethrones it. Smith has talked about a Mallrats sequel over the last decade (he has a completed script and I think might have been in pre-production at some point before the pandemic), but I think it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie on this one.