Franchise Friday: Mallrats (1995)
Is Kevin Smith's second film a sophomore stumble or a secret success?
A few years back on We’re Watching Here, we did a series about films from 1995. I recommend you go back and listen to it; it was a fun miniseries, and we hit on some interesting films, including Se7en, Smoke and 12 Monkeys.
As we were planning, I knew that I wanted to somehow incorporate Kevin Smith’s Mallrats into the mix. I don’t think it’s possible to talk about the movie scene of the 1990s without mentioning Smith, and it had been a while since I’d seen his sophomore feature. We slated it, and I popped it in the night before Easter just about two years ago, ready to catch back up with TS, Brody and the gang.
It was not a great experience.
If you go back and listen to that episode, much of it is me apologizing to Perry for picking this film, and being exasperated about the slog Smith foisted upon audiences. I found its characters grating and obnoxious, recoiled at its ugly aesthetic, and hated its shrill tone.
Watching it again, I don’t disagree with my reaction from two years ago. But for whatever reason, the experience was slightly more enjoyable this time around. Smith widens the world from Clerks but doesn’t take his mind out of the gutter, and the result is a film that has aged poorly and is at times grating and garish. But when it works, there’s a cartoon charm that propels it, and it’s anchored by a Jason Lee performance that might be among the best in Smith’s canon.
From the convenience store to the food court
When Clerks was released in 1994, it was seen as a breath of fresh air, part of an indie film revolution that would define that decade’s films. Working on a bare-bones budget, Smith had made something that felt original, showcasing a sharp wit and an ability to work within strict confines. Understandably, people were curious about what he would do next.
Today, helming a successful independent film is usually followed by an offer to direct a superhero movie or other franchise addition, as we’ve seen with the likes of Colin Trevorrow, who went from Safety Not Guaranteed to Jurassic World, or Ryan Coogler, who followed up Fruitvale Station with Creed and Black Panther. Back then, IP wasn’t quite king and comic book movies weren’t making bank, so the next step in selling out was to take studio money. Smith wasn’t given command of beloved IP (although, ironically, Mallrats is peppered with comic book references), and instead of going big and weird, he opted to return to New Jersey and trade convenience shops and video stores for food courts and mall corridors. Many critics were disappointed that his vision was still so small, most notably Roger Ebert, who wrote:
Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types.
Watching Mallrats and Clerks in such close proximity, there’s definitely a sameness in terms of approach. Both films are dialogue-heavy movies about people who either work and don’t want to or don’t seem to have jobs or the desire to get any. They’re slackers who spend their day getting stoned, whining about their sex lives, and trying to endure the people they perceive to be sellouts and idiots.
But is it that Smith has sold out, or is that he’s just as unambitious as his characters, none too eager to do a blockbuster crowd pleaser or a film about Something? In hindsight, it’s easy to see that Smith likely saw this as a chance to go a bit bigger and sillier, but still take advantage of a large budget to go to the mall and goof around with his friends. His voice isn’t muffled; View Askew fans can definitely see his same obsessions and quirks brought up again or introduced to be repeated in future movies. And I think the voice that sounds a bit too familiar is not one of compromise, but one of a writer-director who was less interested in being original and more interested in making something that felt filtered through the pop culture he loved, liberally spiced with f-bombs and fart jokes.
Whether it’s any good is another question.
Slackers, idiots and goofballs
Two films into this View Askewniverse revisit, I’m picking up something that would have shocked me as a twentysomething: I don’t know that Kevin Smith knows how to write sympathetic characters.
That sounds a bit weird, given that the bread and butter of his career has been his ongoing stable of stoners, slackers and service workers. But I think what Smith largely figured out, with a few exceptions, is that people kept returning to his characters not because they liked them but because they liked how appalling they were. His jerks and idiots are the characters who keep recurring, while his milquetoast sympathetic leads are largely left behind or keep returning with very little personal growth.
Dante is the protagonist of Clerks, but as I wrote last week, it’s hard to muster much sympathy from him. He whines about a job he easily could have left for something better. He complains about a girlfriend who dotes on him and pines for one who cheats on him. He likes to pretend that he’s above the fray, but he’s just as unmotivated in life and contemptuous of the general public as Randal. He’s the protagonist, but he’s not one I care to root for.
But at least Clerks called Dante out for his hypocrisy, and gave us glimpses of the world’s fetish for picking on him. Mallrats’ protagonist, TS Quint (Jeremy London) might be the most unlikable hero in Smith’s oeuvre, a misogynistic, self-centered slacker whose callousness inadvertently causes a friend’s death and who guilts his girlfriend over trying to help her father, only to not learn any lessons but to be rewarded by getting the girl back and having his dream wedding at Universal Studios. He spends most of the movie moping and being pissed off about having to face the consequences of his own actions, but in the end there are no consequences.
Part of the problem might be that London is just a bad fit for Smith’s universe. He looks too good, his performance is too polished. He can’t get into the rhythm that Smith’s vulgar dialogue calls for, and he’s mopey and sad, when Smith’s writing works best in the mouth of characters who are angry, smart-assed or buffoonishly stupid. Smith writes dialogue for characters who combine cartoon idiocy with self-righteous ‘90s self awareness, something that other cast members like Ethan Suplee, Joey Lauren Adams, Shannon Doherty and even Michael Rooker (as the hateful father of Quint’s girlfriend) take to a bit better, even if their characters aren’t especially well developed.
Quint only becomes the protagonist because so many of the other characters are so wretched. Affleck’s character, even in 1995, would have been seen as sleazeball. But now, 25+ years later, his rapey, lecherous vibe is even ickier, and makes you wonder why anyone thought it was funny. Likewise, the character of Tricia (Renee Humphrey) is one who I can’t imagine being studio-approved today. Her entire character basis is that she’s a 15-year-old who’s smarter than everyone else and is using that intelligence to sleep with a slew of men and write a book called Boregasm. I don’t know if it felt edgy to include a subplot about an underage sexpot in 1995, but these days it feels gross even before the film leans on its statutory rape plotline for a comedic comeuppance at the climax. I don’t mean to imply that Affleck or Humphrey are bad; they’re fine, and Affleck in particular would do some of his best work with Smith in the coming years. These subplots — not to mention Smith’s constant infatuation with sex talk, including multiple discussions about superheroes’ genitals and proclivities — never feel as fresh, funny or even as shocking as Clerks, and instead just feel juvenile, leaving this sophomore film feeling, well, sophomoric.
Smith is more successful with a few other side characters. Ethan Suplee’s role as the hapless lay about who can’t see the Magic Eye picture might be one joke, but it’s a consistently funny one. Adams is light and fun and has a good time with Smith’s dialogue (it’s just too bad she falls prey to Smith’s baser impulses and is the victim of a topless gag). Years before he became the most popular cameo star ever, Stan Lee appears for a confident and heartfelt one on one seen that celebrates iconic status, which had been long cemented by then. And Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith) are actually perfectly used here as cartoony side characters whose plans to thwart a mall game show — complete with blueprints — bring a goofy Looney Tunes energy that largely works. Smith would, of course, later begin to anchor his movies to Jay and Silent Bob with varying results, but the characters work best in small doses, and their moments here feel like zany shorts brought in to goose the energy.
And we can’t talk Mallrats without talking Jason Lee as Brodie, in a performance that transcends its mediocre surroundings to be one of the best in a Smith film. Like Jeff Anderson in Clerks, Lee bounces onto the screen total in sync with Smith’s vibe. If Anderson was Bugs Bunny, Lee is Daffy Duck, constantly angry and seeking revenge, and Lee brings a smirk that lets us know he’s totally in on the joke, making it funnier the more of a jerk Brodie is. Quint never works as a character because Smith wants him to be sympathetic; Brodie is pure id, a stinker who manipulates, cajoles, harasses and pranks everyone around him, and has no moral compunction about it. It could be an acrid role, but Lee brings so much joy and energy that Brodie actually gets funnier the more unhinged he becomes, and I dig the actor’s smartass vibe. If Quint’s happy ending never works because he never learned a lesson, Brodie’s works because he never wanted to learn a lesson, and his finale is so cartoonish (he becomes the host of the Tonight Show) that it’s easy to roll with it. And while Doherty, in what was to be her first major film role, is largely a non-entity, she has real chemistry with Lee; when she says she “loves the [derogatory term]”, we buy it. Mallrats isn’t a great movie; it’s barely a good one. But Lee’s work is fantastic.
The Askewniverse widens
Critics might have complained that Mallrats showed no growth from Smith, but I don’t think that’s particularly fair. True, he still struggles with that static camera and the aesthetics are ugly as sin (the fact that all the store names are juvenile gags doesn’t help things), but I don’t think Smith was phoning it in. He widens the scope a bit in that a mall is bigger than a convenience store, and there’s more of a traditional plot here than with Clerks. Not all his excursions work; the visit to the topless fortune teller is him at his puerile worst, and the gameshow subplot never generates any real sense of tension. But Smith is telling a bigger story; he’s just not telling a huge story (today, we’d applaud that as restraint).
I think part of the issue might be what expectations people had of Smith following Clerks. Directors like Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino had parlayed Sundance success into big-budget and even Oscar-nominated careers. Smith had namechecked Richard Linklater’s Slacker as the inspiration for his debut film, and Linklater had gone on to make a generation-defining coming-of-age movie, Dazed and Confused, as his follow-up, and had turned in the respected Before Sunrise earlier that year. It’s very possible people were expecting Smith to go deeper on his sophomore entry.
But Smith doesn’t aspire to be the next Richard Linklater. A raunchier John Hughes seems to be more his aspiration, or even John Landis (a shot outside an elevator features muzak from The Blues Brothers, and the cops showing up at the mall near the climax feels Landis-inspired). He doesn’t seem interested in going deep or profound. He’s well aware that his trade, as he’ll say in later films, is in dick and fart jokes, and the general vibe is that he wants to work with people he enjoys being around and make people laugh. Again, I don’t know that he’s entirely successful, but it’s not a bad goal. And rather than being suggestive of a writer-director with no voice, that commitment to making goofy, low-rent movies with his friends has been the guiding principle through most of his career, and it’s why he’s beloved by his fans.
And Mallrats isn’t entirely unsuccessful (indeed, after its commercial and critical drubbing, it’s become something of a cult classic and been re-assessed by critics). In its best moments, it moves with cartoon zip and delivers some laughs. Smith knows that Lee is his star, and he gives Brodie the best lines (while Quint may have been written as the protagonist, it’s Brodie we’re cheering on by the end). The opening critics have a colorful comic book motif, years before that would be cool, and Smith wears his obsessions on his sleeves. Sure, the sex jokes might be groan-worthy and the comic book and movie references border on obsessive (there’s more Star Wars and Jaws talk here; Smith’s trademarks), but rather than feel like pop culture cash-ins, they have the hallmark of being the words of a true fan. It was obvious in the years before his death to give Stan Lee’s cameos a sense of weight, but Smith was doing it before Lee was known outside of geek circles (and as a nice circle back, one of his final cameos, in Captain Marvel, sees Lee in 1995 reading the script to Mallrats).
Even as I write this, I find myself asking: wait, do I like Mallrats? I don’t know that I do. I mean, I’m not even sure I like Clerks, and I know I like Mallrats less than Clerks. But I can absolutely see how 19-year-old me would have loved this movie (I didn’t get around to it until my mid-twenties). It’s not good, but it’s likable, in its own shaggy, messy, slacker way. And after its failure with critics and at the box office, Smith would follow it with two of his most acclaimed films.
But, we’ll get to Chasing Amy next week.