Mallrats Movie Review
Clerks wasn't a smash hit or anything, but the black-and-white debut film did well enough in art houses for Gramercy Pictures to lure its young writer/director into making a color movie about Mallrats. After watching the rushes, did Kevin Smith wonder for an instant about giving all the credit to Alan Smithee? We may never know the answer to that one, but it would have been a kinder gesture to his promising career if he had. Although this dreadful film was supposedly written after Clerks, it feels like the first draft of something that was written in high school, stashed in a closet, and forgotten until Hollywood started panting for a follow-up project. You want a funny mall movie, rent Fast Times at Ridgemont High. You want excruciating jokes, lousy acting, lame sight gags, and a plotline that should have been tossed in a dumpster at the very first story conference, Mallrats is the scum de la scum, BENEATH the pile of ultra-bad teen movies, in fact. Anyway, Shannen Doherty was pushing 25 at the time, way too old to be lusting after a guy (execrable newcomer Jason Lee) who sticks his fist up his butt and then shakes hands with his best friend's future father-in-law for a laugh. Are you beginning to get the level of the agony factor here? Marvel Comics veteran Stan Lee appears as himself. Game show maestro Art James and Priscilla Barnes (in a particularly humiliating cameo) are also in this piece of crap. Even if there's nothing else on the video shelf, don't talk yourself into seeing Mallrats even if someone else is paying. (Smith apologized to the critics who hated Mallrats in the end credits of his much better follow-up film, 1997's Chasing Amy, and Jason Lee's acting had even improved by then, too.) woof!
1995 (R) 95m/C Shannen Doherty, Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani, Michael Rooker, Renee Humphrey, Ben Affleck, Joey Adams, Jason Mewes, Brian O'Halloran, David Brinkley, Kevin Smith; Cameos: Priscilla Barnes, Stan Lee, Art James; D: Kevin Smith; W: Kevin Smith; C: David Klein; M: Ira Newborn. VHS, LV, Closed Caption