Manic Expression

I recently saw some Kevin Smith interviews and I was hyped up to watch some of his movie, especially Jay & Silent Bob movies, that I share some common points with. So, I watched them all in order, going to write down my thoughts about ‘em and that will be it.

Clerks (1994)

This B&W picture shows one day in the life of Dante Hicks (played by Brian O’Halloran) where he works as the clerk from a Quick Stop, in a day that he shouldn’t even be there. With him, there’s Randal Graves (played by Jeff Anderson), the clerk from the rental store next to the quick stop, and of course, Jay (played by Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (played by Kevin Smith himself), local drug dealers that spent their life selling pot on the front of the store. The plot of the movie is everywhere, but the straight facts are: Dante Hicks discovers that the girl he dated for several years is getting married and, although they are still friends, wasn’t warned about. He has a girlfriend, sure, but the girlfriend is kind of in a stale situation, where he likes her, but the movie shows he’s much more interested in the girl that is getting married. While this happens, he is counseled by Randal Graves, that doesn’t help, much on the contrary. Now, most of the dialogue is spot on and really resembles part of life that most people went through, at least that I went through, and it’s cool that Kevin Smith could put on a movie, really, “a day in the life”. Many people already tried doing an interesting movie out of “one day in the life of someone”, and failed miserably. However, Clerks suffers because of that. It has a lot of deep things to think about and is an interesting movie to watch, even if you consider that it’s not a kid’s movie by any regard, but the jokes fall short. I didn’t think it was that funny, really. It has dark humor to the brim, and I love the dark humor. What happened to the girl that was going to get married made me laugh so hard that I needed help getting up the chair, but in retrospect, it was the only really funny scene in the movie, and, probably… I was the only one who thought that was funny. This movie must be checked out, but not first; it’s an interesting flick, but I suggest watching other movies to get into the vibe.

Mallrats (1995)

Mallrats is about two guys whose relationship ended in the same day: T.S. Quint (played by Jeremy London) and Brodie Bruce (played by Jason Lee). Now, although I agree with why T.S. Quint is pissed off of why his girlfriend dumped him (because of a tragedy, she has to stay in town and miss the journey, journey which he was going to propose to her), Brodie Bruce has no real right to complain about the break up(he stayed all night playing video games, didn’t satisfy her sexually, she had to sneak in because he was afraid her mother would not like her). However, they both are really pissed off and decide to spend the day together in the mall. In the mall, you can really take a feel of Brodie Bruce’s character (he has no social life outside the mall, he is a nerd, everyone talks to him as if he was a loser, but he tries to help everyone out, even if by some obtuse way) so he becomes much more likable… T.S. Quint not so much, as he passes as a simple do-gooder and you really don’t care that much for him. At the mall, a huge stage is being built, which they discover is the show that T.S.’s girlfriend father is making, which his girlfriend was going to attend too, that made them lose the trip. The show is a seventies date show reborn, and what that means is that T.S.’s ex-girlfriend is going to come out of that show with a date, so they have to make the show stop, and Brodie knows just how: they ask two local hooligans to destroy the stage. Who are the hooligans? Of course it’s Jay & Silent Bob. Silent Bob this time around is an engineering genius, so he figured a way to destroy the stage just by pulling out one thing, which Jay claims as kind of like the Death Star: pulling it and the whole place goes crashing down. This movie relies more in slapstick and normal situations in the life of a nerd like myself, so I found this movie better than the previous one. I really enjoyed Jason Lee’s performance as Brodie Bruce, Jay & Silent Bob had more importance to the story, it’s not as dark as the previous one… I enjoyed it a lot more. This movie started the trend in Kevin Smith’s movies to add cameos: in this one, it was Stan Lee, that really ups the ante. He’s so funny in the movie that the movie could stand if just for his appearance. Definitely a must watch. Maybe start with this one.

Chasing Amy (1997)

Chasing Amy is centers around two comic artists: Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Jason Lee) that created the comic book hit Bluntman and Chronic (based on Jay & Silent Bob). They meet with a girl comic book artist called Alyssa Jones (played by Joey Lauren Addams), that Holden McNeil falls in love. After some loony mishaps, they discover that she is a lesbian. After some movie, they start dating, they have some issues, they break up, and the movie ends with them broken up. This movie won two independent spirits awards and it’s a really bad movie. You probably noticed with me talking about 4 to 5 lines in both movies prior, but this movie… wow. Holden McNeil is the worst person in existence, Alyssa Jones is also a horrible girl, Banky Edwards is just a puppet in the whole movie. The only thing that works for the movie is the somewhat real story that Silent Bob tells Holden McNeil when he goes there to collect his check for the usage of their image. Silent Bob tells about how in the past, he was in love with a girl named Amy, when he found out that she had done some major sexual stuff (I think it was a threesome), and that he was pissed off for that, not because she was a slut as he accused her to be, but because he was afraid that he wouldn’t satisfy a girl that already ventured so much in the sex realm. When he came to his senses, she had already moved on, and since then he was Chasing Amy in other women. I would love to see that instead of this movie, but this movie is all we get. It should be watched just to see where the Bluntman and Comic motif comes from (it appears in one of the others Jay & Silent Bob movie) and Silent Bob telling where the title comes from. It’s a really bad movie, and I don’t understand why it gets so much praise.

Okay, so I broke the 1k word barrier, divide and conquer, as Julio Caesar once said. Part 2 is coming briefly.