The 4:30 Movie (2024)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo, Reed Northrup, Siena Agudong

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It appealed to me more on spec than any Kevin Smith film since Clerks II (2006), and yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to go to the theater.

Did I Like It: When the film is about characters falling in love while trying to sneak into what is obviously, but legally distinct from Fletch (1985)*, it’s very possibly Smith’s most heartfelt, honest, and charming film. Kevin Smith’s got a good fifteen years on me, but I’ve got my own story about the slings and arrows of young love, and one of the ancillary pieces of trivia from that moment in time is a VHS copy of Chevy Chase’s best movie.

That would have been more than enough to sell the movie, but apparently it wasn’t enough to satisfy Smith. When the film is a shooting gallery for “reference to just how much a sacred cultural cow of the 1980s is viewed differently in the mid-2020s” it begins to become something groan-worthy. I leaned into a bit of a headache when Sam Richardson stops the movie cold to go on a little Bill Cosby rant. Not because Cosby doesn’t deserve it, but because there was more winking at the camera in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001).

Then there’s where the film really started to lose me, mostly in its final minutes. Plenty of people have probably moved on from the point where they were most into Smith’s work. So, a film that decides to unravel from being a lightly autobiographical romp to a full blown attempt to make Bluntman Begins. There’s an extended scene—after the main plot is exhausted, you’ll know it when you see it—where it is 100 percent clear the entire time what the reverse angle is looking at, even though you hope against all hope that Smith won’t go there. The scene goes on forever, just holding that other shot at a distance.

Then Smith goes there. Oh, well. I guess we’ll always have Fletch.

*Which, incidentally, was not rated-R, but these are minor quibbles.

The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened? (2015)

Director: Jon Schnepp

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, Jon Peters

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve heard Smith tell his small part of the story, and I patiently sat through the more esoteric part of the third act of The Flash (2023). What more is there?

Did I Like It: My largest complaint is that absolute beast of a title. Why “What Happened”? If we take the logic that added that subtitle, it should be on every documentary. Ken Burns’ The Civil War: What Happened? Capturing the Friedmans: What Happened? Hearts of Darkness: What Happened?

Utter madness.

To the film’s credit, there’s at least something more to it, and Schnepp finds that something more. Smith is here to tell his side of the story again, but we also get Jon Peters largely living up to that legend, while still managing to deny he ever insisted that Superman not fly in the film as he developed it.

I’m surprised they could get Burton on the record about the whole thing, but his insights are more fascinating than anything else. I’m surprised that the fate of the film still sort of bothers him, and that he was ever going to get talked into doing a superhero film for Warner Bros. again after the apathy they berated him with in the wake of Batman Returns (1992).

But the thing that I’m most surprised to see is that there was at least a possibility, had Superman Lives been actually made, it might have actually worked. Simply put, despite teaser posters sent and test footage shot, this film was a very long way from coming to pass. Were they actually filming, Burton would have found some way to bring his vision to a project that never felt on spec like it was going to be a fit.

The studio would have hated it, and the McDonald’s high command would have a riot, but that’s when Burton can really start to cook.

Or he just would have made this instead of his Planet of the Apes (2001). That’s the thing about films that are never made. They can either be the greatest thing you will never see, or it can be so insanely bad that the human brain simply can’t process its dimensions.

Dogma (1999)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman

Have I Seen It Before: I’m not sure how someone gets through the early aughts without taking in the film. I’m not sure how precisely my gang and I got to the film when most of them would go out and buy pearls to clutch at anything rougher than a hard PG-13, but we did. Most people didn’t like it. Some people threw some real temper tantrums about it.

I remember this exchange in particular:

Someone trying to make the peace about the whole affair. “I mean, it is a little Unitarian…”

Me, several years before actually becoming a Unitarian. “So?”

These are the moments that stick in your mind, along with, presumably, some moments from the film itself.

Did I Like It: Is it enough to say that it may still be my favorite Smith film? That may be damning with faint praise, as his later works have left me either mildly amused or resoundingly cold, but it has everything someone could possibly want from one of his films. It is funny. Yes, some of it still works. Most of that is in the performances. George Carlin is good as the hapless, self-absorbed priest who accidentally brings existence to the brink. Chris Rock may never have been better in the films (even if he always seemed more at home with in a sketch or with a microphone in his hands). Mewes—always a bit much to take depending on how susceptible one is to the charms of catchphrases—gets all the best lines, and manages to throw away more than a few of them.

It has that independent film spirit that tends to melt away there in the mid-2000s and has felt a little bit forced since Red State (2011).

But most importantly, it has something to say. Back in the day, there was more than a little pearl clutching about his other films, like Clerks (1994), but here you could judge your uptight friends and it actually might lead you to start contemplating more profound ideas about the universe… Like how John Hughes can both set Jay and Silent Bob (Smith) on their holy path by writing The Breakfast Club (1985), and then sell his soul to Satan by the 1990s.

Clerks III (2022)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Trevor Fehrman

Have I Seen it Before: Well…

Did I Like It: I remember after taking in Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) lamenting a bit that the occasionally promised evolution of Smith as a filmmaker was at best delayed—in favor of what felt like a thematic regression—and might never come to pass. Years later, as I took in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019) I was mildly charmed by the prospect of a reunion with old friends who were, by all appearances, content in if not insistent on staying exactly as they were in those fabled good old days.

And here, with a (final?) return to the Quick Stop I’m stuck somewhere in the middle. If anything, this felt far more like what one might have expected from Clerks II (2006), in as much as it actually takes place in the aforementioned Quick Stop. But then again, I’m willing to die on the hill that the second movie is far funnier than what we’re treated to here. Although, I will admit one’s reactions to the films of Kevin Smith are different at 22 than they will be at 38*. Not for nothing, but the realization made nearly thirty years ago that a little convenience store in Jersey doesn’t photograph all that great in color still holds up. Hence, the second movie spending as little time there as possible.

But there’s something beyond these little quibbles that is not quite right about this movie, and it’s taken me a few days to put my finger on it.

It has absolutely no idea what it wants to say about death. Or, in the alternative, it knows what it wants to say about death, but can’t hold that thought for long without directly contradicting it. Dante (O’Halloran) and Randal (Anderson) facing their mortality is a fine enough (albeit not inherently comedic) premise, but the idea that life is for the living only works for precisely one half of our heroes. Randall makes his movie (which, since it isn’t 1994 couldn’t possibly exist in a market absolutely engorged on independent film, but whatever) and finds purpose where he resolutely avoided it in the past. Dante, on the other hand spends the entire movie trying and failing to move beyond his grief, before he just dies anyway? I suppose he just wasn’t supposed to be here (Earth) today, but Dante’s arc—such as it is—is absolutely inert by the time the movie is over.

Oh, and the movie wasn’t especially funny. There, I can be a near-forty grump again.

* In a row? See, I can still get in the spirit of things…

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Harley Quinn Smith

Have I Seen It Before?: As the movie willfully makes a point of reminding me at various points during its runtime, if you’ve seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), then you’ve seen this movie, too. The characters are the same. Even their arcs (such as they are) are essentially the same. And yet, curiosity abounds. My view on Smith has dimmed considerably over the years. I used to be a regular listener of his podcasts, and would make a point of being there on opening weekend for any of his movies. Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) seemed like a step back from him. I was relatively ambivalent about Red State (2011). I bounced out of Tusk (2014) after about half an hour, steadfastly ignored Yoga Hosers (2016), and am somewhat relieved to realize that Moose Jaws never saw the light of day. So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw a trailer for this film and was something resembling intrigued.

Did I like it?: Well, let me put it this way:

Have you ever run into somebody you used to hang out with all of the time, but haven’t seen them in years, maybe even decades?

You chat for a while and catch up on old times. Old inside jokes abound, many unlocking memories that had been the farthest thing from your mind for God knows how long. Every once in a while, those memories even bring a smile to your face.

But then something begins to dawn on you. The version of you that knew this old friend? An absolute stranger. When you really start to think about it, there is nothing connecting you to this person anymore.

You say it’s great to see the old friend, and that they shouldn’t be a stranger. The first sentiment is only kind of true, and the second one is something resembling a fiction.

Has any of that ever happened to you?

That’s it. That’s the whole review.