Things weren’t going so hot for Kevin Smith after Mallrats, considering it made no money and everyone hated it. But there was one silver lining for Smith on his sophomore film: Joey Lauren Adams. The two met on the Mallrats set, and ended up dating for a while. It was only a few years before they split on amicable terms, but their romantic tryst ended up being the direct inspiration for Smith’s next film, a more dramatic turn taking a naked and honest look at relationships, specifically on how one’s insecurities can cloud and warp them. Made on an incredibly small budget, Chasing Amy turned out to be Smith’s second wind, with many critics being pleasantly surprised by his headier, more serious film. It showed that there was a little more that Smith had to offer than his usual crude fare, and although that’s pretty much the pond he continued to wade in for most of his ensuing career, Chasing Amy definitely displayed a new side of him.

As I mentioned before, Mallrats and Chasing Amy are the only two Kevin Smith movies in this series I haven’t watched since high school. And while I felt reasonably confident my thoughts on Mallrats wouldn’t change much from my memories of it (and they didn’t), I was curious to how I’d react to Chasing Amy. I could certainly see why a slow-moving romantic drama wouldn’t be that appealing to my teenage self, but I’m definitely more susceptible to this sort of film as an adult. I was also curious how much of a potentially cringe-worthy time capsule this would be in regards to its gay subject matter; the premise alone of a lesbian falling for a man seemed like it might not hold up super well. So after finally seeing it again, I’m definitely a little conflicted. I wouldn’t consider it a good movie, but there’s definitely quite a bit here that I think works well. It certainly feels like Smith’s voice is back in it after Mallrats, undoubtedly because of how personal the subject matter is to him, but the execution of the film is a bit of a mixed bag. Continue reading “ReView Askew: Chasing Amy (1997)” →

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. Continue reading “ReView Askew: Mallrats (1995)” →

Filmmakers always put a little bit of themselves into their work. Why else create something if you’re not drawing from your own emotions, your own experiences, your point-of-view on the world? Even the biggest blockbusters, the successful ones anyway, have at least a little nugget of human truth to them, a specific voice by someone with something to say. Kevin Smith is an extremely clear example of this, as his movies, for better or worse, are populated with characters who represent himself, speaking from his perspective. The bedrock of this, of course, is Clerks, a movie he wrote and shot when he was 22 years old working at a convenience store… about a 22-year-old who works at a convenience store.

If you mention Kevin Smith to anybody on the planet, the first word out of their mouth would be Clerks. Almost thirty years later and it’s still Smith’s most identifiable calling card, one that he’s most certainly embraced. There’s definitely a sweetness to the respect he holds to his seminal film, acknowledging how it made his career and never losing sight of that fact. But then he’s made many a joke over the years about how he never really progressed past Clerks and it’s all downhill from there, almost to the point that it feels like a defense mechanism for him. But forget all that, let’s just focus in on just the movie by itself, this little indie darling made by some kid on a shoestring budget about a bunch of slacker twenty-somethings yakking about Star Wars and cursing about the jobs they hate. Continue reading “ReView Askew: Clerks (1994)” →