Mallrats (1995) Review

 

Mallrats (1995)

Mallrats follows Brodie and T.S., who take a trip to the mall after their girlfriends dump them, but crash a game show in an attempt to win them back. 

One of the things that makes Kevin Smith so special as a director is he doesn’t make films for critical praise or acclaim. He makes them for himself, his friends, and for people like him. It takes a certain type of individual to watch people beat up the Easter Bunny, visit a topless fortune teller (with a 3rd nipple I might add), or just mull around the mall for 2 hours but I’m one of those people. It lends credence to its’ phenomenal writing and acting that you can take a film with no real plot and make it enjoyable, having no place to be and no place to go, much like the characters in the movie.

The long diatribes about nothing, the anti-establishment ramblings of Brodie (who spends a lot of the film clarifying escalator etiquette and other mall law), and the extremely crass and juvenile style of slapstick, self-loathing humor all land with ease. 

It manages to throw so many ridiculous events at you and even sends Jay and Silent Bob, who are at their best here, off on a sub plot to terrorize the mall cops. Taking all of these wacky chapters and still managing to find the time for heartfelt monologues from the likes of Stan Lee is so oddly refreshing because it feels real. 

We get one of Smith’s best casts yet, starring Jeremy London, Ben Affleck, Stan Lee, Shannon Doherty, Claire Forlani, Michael Rooker, Jay Mewes, Kevin Smith, and Jason Lee. Lee and Smith go together like peanut butter & jelly, with Lee showing just how funny he can be when given free reign to be an ass with a fantastic script. His impetuous behavior and sarcastically contrived humor bounce so well off of every member of the cast, it genuinely makes the movie. 

Mallrats, directed by Kevin Smith, finds excellence in it’s depiction of every day people (nerds) doing every day things, in a movie that really highlights the nerdy, slackerish culture of the mid-90s. I guess in the years since, where malls have fallen out of favor, it does come off as a bit dated but that isn’t to say that it isn’t still relevant for each generation of people. In classic Smith fashion, it manages to pull at your heart strings, split your sides with laughter, and even make you question your own missteps in the wide world of love, all within an over exaggerated tale of all the weirdos you run into in the mall, in this hilariously generational comedy. 

9.7/10

Happy Easter everyone!