Mallrats

🍿🍿🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 498: 06.28.22 review beings ~26:30 Mallrats is notably better than Clerks, but it's still only better in the way drinking a cup of lukewarm piss is better than drinking a cup of piping hot diarrhea (SORRY, just trying to put in terms Kevin Smith fans will understand). The dialogue is still so poorly written that maybe the 5% of jokes which aren't completely horrendous get lost in a sea of unnecessary words. (MAYBE. 5% seems generous.) There are two things going for this which separates it from its bottom-of-the-barrel predecessor: (1) Jason Lee is the best actor for this type of material and while the material is still the pits, he elevates it as much as is humanly possible, and (2) the physical humor goofs, most notably the hijinks with Jay and Silent Bob, aren't bad because at least there's not much talking during them.

Kevin continues his very weird ideas about sex here, as anything other than P-into-V hetero stuff is strictly for **checks notes** literal pedophiles and prisons. In fact, we get to see Ben Affleck have anal sex with a 15-year-old at the end of this, which is super fun. Hey. Ya gotta drive that point home! (Just don't ask what the point really is.)

This is essentially the exact same movie as Clerks. Jason Lee is Randall and Jeremy London is Dante. Both are vast upgrades in terms of acting, though London is extremely bad. The video rental and convenience stores have been replaced by a mall. Instead of making life hell for people who shop, they're making life hell for people who work. Etc Etc. It sucks. It looks worse than made-for-TV movies of its era. Its so painfully unfunny at times, you somehow forget it's a comedy despite its endless visual tentpoles declaring it such. Giving it a 3 is more than generous, and really it's only because — and same with Clerks — I've already seen how much worse it can get.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 498A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 498C ⫸

---

Mallrats is a 1995 American buddy comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith and starring Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Shannen Doherty, Claire Forlani, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, Joey Lauren Adams, Michael Rooker, and Smith as Silent Bob. It is the second film in the View Askewniverse after 1994's Clerks, although, chronologically, Mallrats takes place a day before. It was released on October 20, 1995.