Mallrats

Year:1995 - View Askew Productions Director: Kevin Smith Screenplay: Kevin Smith Starring: Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Shannen Doherty, Clair Forlani, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Mewes, and Kevin Smith

Mallrats is a lousy film. Take out the swearing and add a few busty women and this movie would be perfect fare for USA Network's "Up All Night". After director Kevin Smith's surprisingly successful independent effort, Clerks, Universal Studios bankrolled Smith's next enterprise. Unfortunately, you can dress up a pig in expensive clothes but you still have a pig. And what a pig it is! David Klein continues as Smith's cinematographer. His work is just as uninspiring in this film as in Clerks. If you look up Klein's other film credits in the Internet Movie Database you'll notice they are limited to films Smith has directed. Go figure.

One glaring inadequacy of this film is the bad acting. A higher budget and some name actors doesn't help the performances in this film. In this case, I don't really blame the actors themselves. They are left on their own to struggle with a bad script. What Smith really could have used on this film was a script editor. Many times the dialogue does not seem to flow well because it has been written so badly. No one in Jersey talks likes this or so much. The characters in this film talk nonstop. In this movie there are two extremes of oration. One character, Silent Bob, never says anything; while everyone else never shuts up. Someone should tell Smith that pauses are at times more important than words in a script. What is spoken by the actors is not the fast-paced and witty repartee of Howard Hawks' comedies. Instead, the jokes which inconspicuously slip by are pretty banal.

As for the plot, except for the novelty of a topless psychic, it is fairly unoriginal. Jason Lee and Jeremy London play two young slackers, Brodie and T.S., who have just been dumped by their girlfriends Rene and Brandi, played by Shannen Doherty and Clair Forlani. The girlfriends are dissatisfied with their boyfriends self-centeredness and lack of ambition. Brandi's father has a dating game show, "Truth or Date", that is being broadcast, of course, live in the local mall (in spite of all of the technical difficulties involved in a live broadcast). Meanwhile, Brodie's ex is now dating a manager of one of the stores in the mall. So how does Smith get his two heroes back with their girls?  T. S. goes on the dating game show as a prospective date where Brandi is a contestant. Brodie wins his girl back by showing an embarrassing tape of his rival having sex with another girl during the show's broadcast. The two boys' rude behavior and foul language on the live show predictably reduce Brandi's father to a slobbering idiot. Brodie's lewd antics greatly impress two network execs enough that they offer Brodie his own talk show. The film's audience is also treated to some scenes where; someone repeatedly bursts in on a woman undressing; a couple has sex in an elevator; and a person in a animal outfit gets beat up. Wow! I've never seen that in a movie or on television before! Where does Smith get his innovative and fresh ideas?

As in Clerks, the women in this film are portrayed as manipulative, fickle sluts who demand their men have meaningful careers while they themselves are just as big slackers as their men. The women in the film are not bimbos by any means. In fact, they seem much smarter than any on the guys. Which makes it all the more mysterious why these woman go out with these idiots in the first place.

The one redeeming feature of Mallrats is the inclusion of the two characters, Silent Bob and Jay, from Clerks. Although these two participate in some of the very stupid slapstick episodes in the movie they are still intriguing and memorable. Jay's unique rap and Silent Bob's lack thereof are original and innovative characteristics. A more interesting movie would have followed these two characters around for the entire film. On the whole, Mallrats is somewhat a misnomer for this film. Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a much better, even though much older, film about mall culture. A person's time would be better spent hanging out at a mall than watching this big-budget student film.

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