'Mallrats' is the second film from writer/director Kevin Smith; and despite his accolades and masses of fans; is nothing to get too excited about.
Although the film carries a nice, realistic feeling through most of it as well as maintaining a nice atmosphere for most of the duration, the film is overall of poor quality. I'll admit that the humour put through via dialogue is smooth and close to seamless as well as the fact it contains entertaining one liners and interesting repetitions of a certain jokes; something we saw in 'Clerks.' (1994) that was used to good effect, albeit a little too often.
Although the basics seem to be present and are exploited well, the real bulk of Mallrats: its plot, characters and acting all fail to live up to the hype. The film begins to play out like a love triangle comedy and although the script is trying to paper over the cracks, it doesn't take a genius to see that, really, it's just a load of slapstick humour in a mall with a love theme (I say 'theme' because there is not enough evidence to suggest this is a romance story). The fact that a shopping mall is used as the setting for the duration of the film is a little silly and as a 'world' for the characters, it soon grates. The settings become repetitive, the scenes predictable and the whole thing just gets frustrating.
Before I saw the film, it was built up as one thing, but what the finish product was, was something completely different. It was a cheap, wannabe cult film that ended up like a rom-com with a load of slapstick. I mean, how many times can you re-watch a film where someone trips, flies through the air and crashes into a female changing room booth door and is supposed to act as the humour?
The plot for the film is supposed to read something like the following: 'Two guys are dumped by their girlfriends and hang around a mall all day'. Fine, but where's the rest of it? There are numerous, ludicrous events that happen during the film such as the silly recording of a date game show (yawn) and the daft tactics that the characters Jay and Silent Bob use to defeat security guards (Batman gadgets to winch away to safety?!). Things like this can only be put up with for so long before they become tiresome and unbelievable. The film was built up as something much more simple than this so why didn't it play out in a much simpler manner? Perhaps more similar to Clerks.
Although some of the acting by Jay and Silent Bob is rather funny and the script is witty in general, especially the opening monologue which was a great way to announce the film, Mallrats is let down by its inability to keep a good, consistent, realistic joke going in the long run. The antics and slapstick become dull and by the time the laughably bad climax has arrived, you really have switched off; pretty much entirely. Fans of this will like it for a while but will grow out of it in time but by that time, a whole new generation will have come along and started to like it, so I guess at least that's a good thing.
Although the film carries a nice, realistic feeling through most of it as well as maintaining a nice atmosphere for most of the duration, the film is overall of poor quality. I'll admit that the humour put through via dialogue is smooth and close to seamless as well as the fact it contains entertaining one liners and interesting repetitions of a certain jokes; something we saw in 'Clerks.' (1994) that was used to good effect, albeit a little too often.
Although the basics seem to be present and are exploited well, the real bulk of Mallrats: its plot, characters and acting all fail to live up to the hype. The film begins to play out like a love triangle comedy and although the script is trying to paper over the cracks, it doesn't take a genius to see that, really, it's just a load of slapstick humour in a mall with a love theme (I say 'theme' because there is not enough evidence to suggest this is a romance story). The fact that a shopping mall is used as the setting for the duration of the film is a little silly and as a 'world' for the characters, it soon grates. The settings become repetitive, the scenes predictable and the whole thing just gets frustrating.
Before I saw the film, it was built up as one thing, but what the finish product was, was something completely different. It was a cheap, wannabe cult film that ended up like a rom-com with a load of slapstick. I mean, how many times can you re-watch a film where someone trips, flies through the air and crashes into a female changing room booth door and is supposed to act as the humour?
The plot for the film is supposed to read something like the following: 'Two guys are dumped by their girlfriends and hang around a mall all day'. Fine, but where's the rest of it? There are numerous, ludicrous events that happen during the film such as the silly recording of a date game show (yawn) and the daft tactics that the characters Jay and Silent Bob use to defeat security guards (Batman gadgets to winch away to safety?!). Things like this can only be put up with for so long before they become tiresome and unbelievable. The film was built up as something much more simple than this so why didn't it play out in a much simpler manner? Perhaps more similar to Clerks.
Although some of the acting by Jay and Silent Bob is rather funny and the script is witty in general, especially the opening monologue which was a great way to announce the film, Mallrats is let down by its inability to keep a good, consistent, realistic joke going in the long run. The antics and slapstick become dull and by the time the laughably bad climax has arrived, you really have switched off; pretty much entirely. Fans of this will like it for a while but will grow out of it in time but by that time, a whole new generation will have come along and started to like it, so I guess at least that's a good thing.