Malls R Us

The topic is too exciting to deserve the treatment it gets. You learn very little about the macrodynamics of social processes that stand behind the mall phenomenon (and it's decline) and you also learn very little about the microlevel - how the mall environment works. The touch on developments in Asian countries is only very light, the conversations are staged with an extremely stiff acting (in a documentary - why?) and the "funny" element rests largely on ridiculing one of the mall developers, a certain Robyn somebody. The feeling of nostalghia for closed malls is not understandable to me. I think we really should try to keep these feelings for something or someone more important than a suburban commercial centre.

"Malls R Us" is not an easy movie to find (unedited, at least), so anticipation's been steadily building for several years. Worth the wait? Well, in some ways.

A good deal of the running time is used to show how shopping malls have expanded to other countries and have ballooned in scope; urban retail resorts is the name of the game now, merging consumerism with nature. It's here that the movie loses focus considerably. And for all the talk about bigger and better, it's a fairly somber piece.

Which actually dovetails nicely with those segments that work the best; namely, the decline. It turns out the most interesting scenes involved Peter Blackbird from deadmalls.com, ruminating on the remains of once-thriving places of retail worship. What's more sad (or eerie) than a dying mall? Or worse, those that have closed but still stand; ghost town parking lots, scars of JCPenney signs left over. One of the interviewees said that malls were built in the hopes of drawing people back to blighted cities . . . and they've become blight unto themselves. This documentary does a terrific job hammering home that point (in its limited screen time) and I found that aspect the most fascinating.

6/10