Four Letter Words

MOVIE #1,474 • 🍿🍿🍿 • 03.25.24 𝘚𝘌𝘈𝘕 𝘉𝘈𝘒𝘌𝘙: 𝘋𝘐𝘙𝘌𝘊𝘛𝘖𝘙 𝘍𝘖𝘊𝘜𝘚 I hated this, and at times I hated it A LOT, but part of my hate is tied to the fact that I have been to this party before IRL and it's so depressing to see it rendered on screen, like a memory mocking me. Also, the influence of Clerks is impossible to deny and/or ignore (as much as I really want to) and what's worse is it's every bit as misogynist (even if, by painting these losers and their sausage party as nothing but pathetic, he's trying to be subversive on some level). The Smith comparison is obvious and Baker even acknowledged such in an interview: "It was a look at guys in the suburbs. I’m hoping some day I’ll have the money to remaster it. It was shot on a 35; I made it in my early twenties. It was very much like a social-realist Kevin Smith film. Because in your twenties you see time in a different way, I let time fly by."

The dialogue simply gets more Clerksian as the movie goes along. Although these characters are MUCH more realistic so: gotta give him credit for that, at least. And you simply can’t argue with this prescient moment…


In addition to aping Clerks to a degree, this is also part of a popular 90s/turn of the millennium trend: the capturing of a specific moment in upper middle class Caucasian life, usually about men from a man’s perspective. This movement sucks as well. Not as much as whatever Kevin Smith is attempting to do, but it certainly sucks (films like Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming, for example, which I can’t stand).

I actually recorded a podcast (!) for this review: a short ten-minute rant that I recorded in my car and you can listen to below. At the time, I was sort of under the impression that Baker might have disowned this picture, but going off that one quote from 2016 above, that’s clearly not the case. I’m not sure I made my point about artistic intent and the ability to process films from a different era that you also happened to have lived through, but I did my best…

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Four Letter Words (also known as Climax) is a 2000 American comedy film by director Sean Baker, in his directorial debut. It was released on April 15, 1970.