Review: Chasing Amy (1997)
Rating: **1/2 (out of 4)
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Sorry. But how else could I start a review of a movie by Kevin Smith?
For those not familiar with Smith -- as you might have guessed, he uses a lot of profanity. His first widely released film, _Clerks_, almost received an NC-17 solely on the basis of language. _Chasing Amy_, which Smith both wrote and directed, doesn't quite meet that standard, but it comes pretty fucking close.
Profanity is not ordinarily a matter worth mentioning in a review, but in this case it seems sympomatic of both the good points and bad points of the film. Smith apparently wants to send the message that his characters are young and frank and raw, and also that he's not going to present a fucking prettified Hollywood version of them. When that strategy works, it works quite well. Unfortunately, it doesn't work all the time.
Recent Oscar-winner Ben Affleck plays Holden McNeil, a young comic book artist who falls hard for a female comic book artist named Alyssa (played by Joey Lauren Adams). Alyssa is everything he's looking for in a woman, except... gasp... she's also a fucking lesbian! Fuck! What a dilemma! Although Holden and Alyssa manage to overcome this small obstacle, Holden's close friend and inker Banky (Jason Lee) finds a whole heap of other obstacles to throw in their path.
The core of this film is the relationships among its central characters (as well as a gem of a supporting character, played by Dwight Ewell). Smith manages to create a situation that is both witty and tragic, and quite believable. _Chasing Amy_ takes the trouble to explore its characters in detail. They even have extended conversations that sound like the conversations real people have. This is quite refreshing after a diet of typical Hollywood product. Indeed, it is a fucking relief.
The actors are also quite impressive, particularly Affleck and Lee. It's a bit late to be making predictions about bright futures for these actors, as they're already well on their way to Hollywood stardom. Adams's performance is a bit more uneven, and her whiny helium voice (reminiscent of Jennifer Tilly's) became grating pretty fucking quickly.
As for the movie's shortcomings: for one, the characters are not always convincing. For example, we are supposed to believe that Holden and Banky are hip, with-it young cartoonists and yet also fucking clueless enough not to realize that a bar they visit is a hardcore lesbian hangout. I was not persuaded. The camera work is also remarkably lacking. Smith seems content to "point and shoot" and never re-aim the camera, to the extent that the actors almost slip out of camera range at one point.
And, finally, there's the matter of the cursing. It's difficult to express reservations about profanity without coming across as a prudish old fuddy-duddy. ("Shame on you, Kevin Smith. Wash that potty mouth out with soap! Tsk, tsk, tsk," etc.) But the problem with the profanity in _Chasing Amy_ wasn't that it was shocking, but that it was boring. It's simply too restricted a palette to work from. Smith hasn't yet figured out that saying 'fuck' and 'bitch' and 'cunt' twenty times in a scene does not constitute character development.
(I've tried to create the same effect in this review. Reading 'fuck' over and over again became dull pretty quickly, didn't it?)
What's worse, even some of the character development doesn't really seem like character development. Some critics have described Smith's dialogue as "funny and raunchy," but a fair amount of it was depressingly reminiscent of adolescents trying to be "daring" and "unrepressed." Having had such conversations when I was sixteen, I don't see the attraction in sitting through less clever versions of them in a movie.
On the whole, 'adolescent' is a good description of what's right and wrong with this movie. It has an adolescent's energy and intensity. It also has an adolescent's tendency to think that it's really clever and original to scorn subtlety, and also to say 'fuck' in every sentence. While on the whole I enjoyed it, I think Smith's work will be better once he gets over the desire to epater la bourgeoisie (i.e., "give the squares something to bitch about").
Fuck!
Christopher Roberson
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