Les Glandeurs

To everybody who did not like this movie: You are not obviously Kevin Smith fans. I am, and everyone one of the NJ3 are great. This one is just different. Shannen Doherty is surprisingly cool in this one, and Jason Lee is hysterical. Jay and Silent Bob are hysterical as usual, and everyone else is great. Watch if you are a Smith fan, just keep an open mind.

I guess that people can be split in two ways - those that like Kevin Smith's films and those that don't. From watching his films, he seems to like his characters to exist in his strange world where things are exaggerated and ridiculous characters do unrealistic things.

That sums up Mallrats - it's the story of two friends who both lose their girlfriends and then spend the rest of the day hanging around in the local mall. Whilst hanging around they meet friends and get into scrapes as they strive to get their girlfriends back.

I suppose if you looked at it coolly it's all a bit silly - fully of ridiculous situations and scrapes that are resolved in unbelievable ways. But then if you accept Smith's world of comic book style adventures and cartoon film making then this is great. Whereas his later Chasing Amy brings adult subjects into the comedy - this is pure cartoon comedy, although understand it's not dumb like slapstick - but crazy, clever humour with plenty of jokes occuring all around the main action.

OK the overall plot is weak at best, but the story is more about the characters and the situations along the journey to the end of the film and here is where Smith wins. He has created crazy characters that are funny and often exaggerated versions of people or of people's reactions to situations (witness the magic-eye poster guy for an example of exaggerated humour).

Lee is fantastic, this is the role he was made for - he reacts in an exaggerated way to everything and really hams it up. I suppose he's a comic-book reading loser but in this world he is funny and in control. He is loud and abusive to others and it's great! Jeremy London is a weak straight man and doesn't really convince.

Jay & Silent Bob are good as always - although for most of the movie they exist in their own little subplot of taking on the mall police. Again their adventures are exaggerated for humour.

If you hated Clerks and Smith's other movies then you'll hate this. However if this world is one that appeals to you then you'll love this movie's reckless abandonment of reality and enjoy the adventures involved in a trip to the mall.

After being dumped by their girlfriends, T.S. Quint(Jeremy London) and Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) go to the mall to keep their minds off the situation. Soon, however, thoughts turn to getting their ladies back and the dynamic duo will have to fight mall security, a fashionable male (Ben Affleck) and a game show producer (Michael Rooker) in order to succeed.

Writing a fair review of "Mallrats" is one of the hardest things for me to do, and it is no surprise that I have not done so in all the years I have been writing reviews. The film came out when I was fourteen, and I went to see it with my cousin at the local mall after a rousing bus trip. We had seen the ambiguous advertisements in the back of comic books for months and just knew this was something we had to see. Once in the theater, we were practically alone -- there were only three other people, including a younger woman and her grandmother, both of whom walked out early on.

For whatever reason, I identified with this film. I had not yet seen "Clerks" and I did not have the background in film to really understand all the references to "Jaws" or "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" or "Apocalypse Now". But the potty humor mixed with the intelligent dialogue (even about scatological topics) hit home with me, and even now -- seventeen years later -- it remains my favorite film, despite my knowing full well it is not critically wonderful and often sexually crude.

I have given the film a high rating because I simply cannot get enough of it. I have the trading cards that were sold at the time, I have visited the Eden Prairie Center where the movie was filmed (it is in Minnesota, not New jersey, strangely enough). But, I want to stress this: my high rating does not by any means indicate this is a critically beautiful film. Read the reviews of the professionals at the time (Ebert, Maltin, and others) and you will see that it was more or less expected to bomb (although I think in hindsight many more people found the film to their liking).

Are there flaws? You bet. Watch Jeremy London, for example. A horrible, horrible actor. Even with these odd, scripted conversations he comes off as forced, and if you watch him while another actor is speaking, you can see him physically preparing himself to speak his lines. He cannot become the character of T.S. Quint, he can only be Jeremy London. Shannon Doherty, likewise, just does not seem to hack it... she is a better actress than many, but this film just did not work for her. She comes off as a reject from "Empire Records", and some lines she delivers make it seem she is not familiar with the subject matter.

Despite the flaws, I am still praising this film. Watch "Clerks" first (even though this one takes place first in chronological order). If you like "Clerks", try this one. Then try "Chasing Amy". All three are great. Personally, I think Kevin Smith's films went downhill after that (although "Red State" is redeeming). He may disagree and I know many of the fans do. But if you do not mind intelligent potty humor, "Mallrats" is for you.

This is a niche film. If you can put yourself into the mindset of a 20-something slacker, who has no ambition whatsoever in life, this film may engender some sense of emotional investment in its characters and a sense of identifying with same. However, if this situation is impossible for you, then you will not only not see the humor herein, you will most likely bemoan the time wasted in its viewing.

This is a Jay and Silent Bob flick wherein the two buds are dumped by their gals, subsequently seeking major wound-licking in the mall. It plays like the Revenge of the Nerds, though not as intelligently, nor with the same amount of heart, but with a more modern spin.

If you've of a mind, this can be highly entertaining. If not, don't say you weren't warned.

It rates a 7.2/10 from...

the Fiend :.

Two underachieving slackers T. S. Quint (Jeremy London) and Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) both lose their girlfriends on the same day Quint's girlfriend Brandi (Claire Forlani) breaking up with him due to wedges with her father and would-be TV producer Jared Svenning (Michael Rooker), while Brodie's girlfriend Rene (Shannen Doherty) breaks up with him due to his lack of drive, motivation, or ambition. With nothing else for them to do, Quint and Brodie spend time at the local mall where fate crosses their paths with their exes, troublemakers Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith), and various mallgoers and staff with grievances against the two.

Mallrats is the sophomore film of writer/director Kevin Smith that marked Smith's first studio project after the breakout success of Clerks impressed producer James Jacks enough to set up a film at Universal. As is the case with many indie directors who transition to the studio environment, Smith had often had to press producers to allow him on certain choices such as the casting of Ben Affleck or in the case of Jay's casting Universal's insistence that either Seth Green or Breckin Meyer played the part (with the Jason Mewes' dailies luckily putting the kibosh on such mandates). When the movie was released it did garner some positive reviews such as from Variety, but most critics tended to look upon it negatively and commercially it underperformed but would later find an audience through home video. Mallrats does show a struggle in smith reconciling his indie rawness with studio polish, but of the 90s slacker/gross-out comedies this was certainly one of the more ambitious and consistently funny of them.

Rather than a slice of life type affair that Smith presented in his debut film Clerks, Mallrats is a built on a more conventional "boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" type story that is primarily a driving engine for the setpieces and jokes within the New Jersey mall where much of the action takes place. While our two leads in Jeremy London's Quint and Jason Lee's Brodie are cut from a similar cloth to Dante and Randall, there's also an undeniably "studio" feeling with the film falling in line with the edgy Gen-Xer types of humor that defined the 90s such as in Beavis & Butt-Head. As Mallrats is primarily a delivery system for various jokes and physical comedy stunts, the film very much lives and dies on its gags and for the most part they work more often than they don't. Particularly standout scenes involving a topless fortune teller, an extended cameo by Stan Lee, and a climax set around a shameless Dating Game knock-off lead to some solid laughs especially from Jason Lee's Brodie who showcases some superb comedic timing. Admittedly some of the pacing could've been tightened up as Smith doesn't feel like he's fully acclimated to a studio comedy (a fact made even more clear in the extended cut which while posessing a certain curiosity factor is more of a glorified workprint with most of the cuts that have been made being positives).

Mallrats has found itself the subject of a cult following since its initial failed release and of that era of 90s slacker/gross-out films it stands above many of its contemporaries and has much snappier dialogue and creativity. Not as quotable or as influential as Clerks, but nonetheless an entertaining but flawed sophomore effort.