Mallrats (dir. Kevin Smith, 1995)
Mallrats is, again, a romantic tale set largely in one location, although rather than just being a single store, it’s now an entire indoor mall, and rather than one flagging romance, it’s two. I’m not sure if the youth of today still hang out in malls for no reason other than it’s a place to hang out, but I the 1990s, that was the thing to do. If you were young, had a dollar in your pocket, and enough agency to travel, you would spend time at the mall. Not to shop. Not to do anything other than hang around. Yes, mallrats were real.
Mallrats feels a lot more broad and slapstick-y than Clerks. There are bigger comic set pieces, actual chases, and some funny pratfalls. These bits of slapstick humor are all well and good, I suppose, but they are not Smith’s strength as a director. Indeed, he shines the brightest when people are just sitting around talking sex and superheroes. When love and relationships are front and center, Smith is great. When he’s dressed as Batman, trying to collapse a stage, not so much.
The central characters are the responsible TS (Jeremy London) and the buffoonish Brodie (Jason Lee). Their relationship is not unlike Dante’s and Randall’s in Clerks, although TS actually seems like a pretty good guy with some direction and drive, and Brodie is shiftless and aimless and sarcastic. And funny. Lee is utterly hilarious, and he’s the best thing about Mallrats.
On the same morning, their respective girlfriends dump them. TS was planning on spiriting Brandi (Claire Forlani) away to Florida for a marriage proposal, but she has to stay in town to help her hated father (Michael Rooker) out with a gameshow he’s working on. He gets so mad about it, she dumps him. Brodie, meanwhile, is a comics-reading, video-game-obsessed man child of about 25 who still sneaks his girlfriend Rene (Shannen Doherty) into his parents’ basement. These two swains, no single, take to the mall in despair. Just to kill time.
Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) are also at the mall, and have their own subplot about trying to sabotage the aforementioned game show – also coincidentally in the mall… You know what? Just like Clerks, the actual plot mechanics don’t really matter. What matters in a film like this are the characters, the tone, and the dialogue.
The main characters are great. They are earnest slackers who may not have much in the way of actual life plans, but who are shard and smart and talkative. They are charismatic and fun to watch, even if they’re losers. They’re also just as dirty as ever; I don’t want to explain what a “stinkpalm” is to you, nor should I reveal the secrets of the three-nippled fortune-teller (Priscilla Barnes). Smith was also perhaps one of the first screenwriters to so actively engage popular culture and comic book adoration. Brodie alludes to real-life superheroes, and possesses the real-life ardor of the comic medium.
Indeed, during the course of the movie, Brodie is allowed to meet one of his heroes, Stan Lee, playing himself. Stan Lee (the man responsible for the most famous Marvel characters, in case you didn’t know) is not much of an actor (he visibly recoils when Brodie shouts “Holy shit!”), but he gives an important speech to Brodie about how comic book heroes are actually manifestations of romantic angst, and how superheroes are not as important as love. This was one of the earliest films to deal with pop culture so directly. Mind you, this was before kids were weaned on big-budget superhero movies.
Mallrats is hilarious, but its slickness do it no favors. It would have, perhaps, been more watchable were it made guerrilla style. Many critics and fans rejected this mid-level studio product, and Mallrats was poorly reviewed and poorly attended. It has since grown a following, but it was one of Smith’s bigger disappointments.
Smith moved back to a small, more indie film for his next opus. It proved to be his best. Let’s look at…
