MALLRATS
A film review by Edwin Jahiel
Copyright 1995 Edwin Jahiel
*
Written and directed by Kevin Smith.
Photography, David Klein.
Editing, Paul Dixon.
Production design, Dina Lipton.
Music, Ira Newborn.
Cast: Shannen Doherty, Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani,
Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Brian O'Halloran, Stan Lee.
A Grammercy release.
97 minutes.
Rated R (language, sex, sex talk)
The most imaginative part of MALLRATS comes with its opening credits, which are blatantly sexual comic book pictures--and that's not too imaginative either.
The biggest laugh in MALLRATS, from an audience of 11-12-year-olds assembled in rows 15 and 16, came when the two protagonists-buddies consult a fortune teller who bares her top and exhibits three nipples. (Number Three, of course, is a fake, but the boys are taken in). Even then, it was only size 4 or 5 laughter on a scale of 1 to 10.
The view of American youth in MALLRATS tries to be funny, which it isn't. It might have been a satire of slackers and mall culture but it isn't that either. It's plain dull and just a series of nails in the American coffin.
The filmmaker is Kevin Smith, whose feature writer-director debut was CLERKS, an original, plotless comedy of people in and around a convenience and a video store. The absurdist, slice-of-life, desultorily conversational and pointedly scatological CLERKS was a hit, though I had my reservations about it. MALLRATS, done in the same spirit and with some of the same actors (Smith himself playing Silent Bob), is a flop.
It has something of a plot, vague and disjointed. T.S. (notice the scatology of the name) (Jeremy London) has been dumped by his fiancee Brandi (Claire Forlani) for reasons too dull to mention. Brodie (Jason Lee), has been dumped by his girl Rene (Shannen Doherty) because, in bed, he is more interested in video-games than in sex. (Let's not even talk about love). The two men (men?) find solace in doing what any red-blooded idiots will do. They go to the Mall. There, a subplot has them trying to sabotage that day's forthcoming game show, a kind of Dating Game, which is produced by Brandi's father, a youthful but bald creep.
The movie's comedy is below sitcom level, the dialogue, action and characters are of no interest, except perhaps to people under twenty with a mental age under six. Since those people neither read film reviews nor put any credence in adult judgments, MALLRATS might just have a career, even though it is exceptionally thin and dull in every way.
The best that can be said is that, at the mall, Smith places a fat young man who stares at a sort of pointillist painting which, looked at with concentration, reveals a sailboat. But the poor fellow stands there and stands there and can't see a thing. Not a bad gag, though thoroughly milked.
Another "funny" item is about a fifteen-year old girl who is presumably so bright that she's a senior. She is writing a book about orgasms and researches by sleeping with men right and left and videotaping the activities. Her language is raunchy even by Kevin Smith standards, standards that use the alphabet from the A-word to perhaps some Z-word, though the N-word is not heard.
The fun and games are uncoordinated and slipshod. The film might have used updated Marx Brothers strategies instead of applying a para-CLERKS style which relies on frail crutches instead of tempo, energy or the occasional witticism.
There are also other inconsistencies. In her letter of resignation, so to speak, Brodie's girl lists his defects. Brodie thinks that "callow" is the only nice thing in the letter, yet he will occasionally use a hi-fallutin' word. We also think for a long time that Brodie and Co. are high-schoolers, but are told at the end that they are college students.
Somehow, comic-book author and icon Stan Lee shows up, gives sage advice to Brodie. It might have been amusing, it is merely artificial. And here and there are tentative take-offs, but these do not take off.
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