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.