CHASING AMY 1997
A film review by Timothy Voon
Copyright 1997 Timothy Voon
Cast: Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith Director: Kevin Smith Producer: Scott Mosier Screenplay: Kevin Smith
Silly me thought this movie was a children's story about a boy chasing a girl called 'Amy'. I wasn't far wrong, just drop the 'R' in children's and you have for yourself a movie rating. So you can imagine my eye-popping surprise at receiving some intriguing sex education experience, I had missed as a happy child; and it was presented with such heart moving earnesty, timed to 141 'minty' minutes (I was sucking 'minties' all the way through).
Sure, I received my fair share of parental guidance about the 'birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees', but they didn't quite say it with the same flare that 'Chasing Amy' did. So here's a couple of things I learnt about sex:
New Vocabulary (words used in a context never seen before): mouth, eat, holes, hands, fists, three ways, finger cuffs, love, taste, pussy cat, laid, riding high, working, shaft, virgin. Now Let's put these words into a more educational context:
"Once there was a penning cartoon artist with HANDS as supple as the skin of a baby's butt. His every stroke WORKED it's way to create a mine SHAFT of exciting pictures, that filled the imagination and teased the eye. That was until he met Amy. Then his growing attentions shifted and twisted and writhed, as he couldn't get this pretty 'dyke', ...ooops (slip of the tongue), I mean girl out of his mind. Like him she also penned pictures with lustful STROKES, she'd never penned a man before she claimed, he was her very first. "My art is not of 'VIRGIN Birth' and never before seen by any man." So with masterful, heaves and sighs, she stroked his ego and PUSSY CAT, and they fell in 'LOVE' with the same moans and groans of a restless night. Then RIDING HIGH on this off-beat romance comes the artist's best friend with breathless news, that in the deepest, darkest, moistest regions of the past, she had once been imprisoned in a HOLE with 'FINGER CUFFS'. "I don't believe it the artists says, how can this be, she claims her art has never been seen by another of my kind. Her MOUTH has not EATEN of the forbidden fruit, but only tasted the sweetness of mine. I am her first I am sure of it." But those curious thoughts still plagued his mind, until he LAID down those angry FISTS, to find the truth revealed - that there were actually THREE WAYS of penning it. 'Nay' says Amy, 'I've changed my style. There is but one way of ending it' - Slap!" From the pages of 'Masterful Penstrokes' by T.M.T. Voon
Kevin Smith the writer/director of 'Clerks' and 'Mallrats', once again presents his material with the same bold, brash, no-apologies style evident in his previous work. Relatively new faces, Ben Affleck (the cartoonist) and Joey Lauren Adams (Alyssa=Amy), seem to have a lot of fun presenting the daring ideas and gritty dialogue. Certainly, this is not a movie to be viewed by the conservative, and faint hearted - I guess that includes me, but I thought it was a child"R"en's movie.
This is an intelligent comedy, with a witty/dirty script which challenges the mind about unusual relationships that seem to defy the normal terms of convention. This story speaks not so much of whether you're gay or not, but more so about accepting a person for who they are, despite their colourful, regretful past.
Comment: Fire trUCK!
Gay Feel Scale: 0% Happy Gilmore / *CHASING AMY* / The Merry Widow 100%
Timothy Voon e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au
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