Mallrats

Mallrats (1995) takes place over one day in a shopping mall. Two men are dumped by their girlfriends the same morning and head for the mall. One of the women is due to appear on a television game show being taped there that day; the other's father is producing it. The whole plot is an attempt to sabotage the show. It is Kevin Smith's second film. His first, Clerks, was made for 27,000 dollars in black and white and had made an impression at Sundance. Mallrats is his first with studio money: colour, a large cast, and entirely inside a mall. It failed commercially and critics disliked it. Smith defended it for years and described the period as the hardest of his career; he made his next film, Chasing Amy, back on a small budget. Its value now is in the cast. Ben Affleck, Jason Lee and Joey Lauren Adams are all here, and it is Jason Lee's first film. Jay and Silent Bob appear for the second time after Clerks, and Smith's shared universe starts here. Stan Lee plays himself and gives one of the characters a lesson about life through comics. It became a cult film on video and television. It runs 95 minutes. Good for: nineties independent comedy, comic book references, and the Kevin Smith universe. Less good for: the humour is crude and sexual, and the women are thinly written. The plot is contrived and many scenes do not connect. The natural register of Clerks is gone.