Avis Metacritic

At its core, it’s simply a sweet personal story — made by a guy who, as we see here, started off wanting to do exactly that.

While still leagues beneath the slacker-inspired brilliance of his early career works, The 4:30 Movie does at least concertedly cement itself in Smith’s prose and perspective.

With “The 4:30 Movie,” a lightly likable coming-of-age story and romantic-comedy, writer/director Kevin Smith (“Clerks III,” “Jay and Silent Reboot”) offers low-stakes nostalgia and very little else.

By far the best thing in the film is Ken Jeong as the theatre manager, preening and ridiculous, dispensing putdowns with surgically precise comic timing.

Austin Zajur and Siena Agudong make for such a cute high school romance prospect that the movie doesn't feel like a total wash. Kevin Smith is still good at constructing funny dialogue and crafting characters you like to watch.

Smith has always been best when he wears his heart on his sleeve as he does with The 4:30 Movie, a film whose earnestness tries to iron out some of the usual problems with Smith’s films, but with mixed results.

Sadly, I’d rather watch any of Smith’s fake movies than The 4:30 Movie, because at least they seem enjoyably weird.

The familiarity is, of course, the point: Anyone going to a new Kevin Smith movie in 2024 is either already well-versed in the comfort food of the View Askewniverse, or is being dragged on a date by someone who is. The result evokes a kind of bittersweet nostalgia—not for the much-mythologized pop-cultural ‘80s, but for a younger, fresher writer-director who was able to do a lot more with a lot less.

Effort goes only so far, and The 4:30 Movie doesn’t surpass Smith’s usual limitations.

Jam-packed with his familiar brand of vulgar yet verbose stoner humor and free-flowing riffs on movies—especially his own—the vibes are certainly off the charts in Kevin Smith’s film.