The 4:30 Movie

My relationship with Kevin Smith is a weird one. In the 90's and early 00's, he was MY filmmaker. If his name was on it, I saw it, day one, no questions asked, no trailer needed. With the exception of Jersey Girl, his run from Clerks to Clerks II was unimpeachable in my heart. But as I grew and my tastes evolved, he didn't. He started to believe his own hype. His movies became a product for a devoted but cult-like following, and damn anyone outside it who dared view his works as less than holy writ. He churned out low-effort ideas dreamed up while stoned, incessantly cast his wife and daughter despite their glaring lack of screen presence or talent, and when he tried to step out of his comfort zone, and rarely tried to step out of his comfort zone. The only movie of his I've enjoyed to any degree since Clerks II was Clerks III, and even that is tainted, as it is a dark and ultimately unpleasant movie. So I went into The 4:30 Movie with major trepidation. I liked the idea of Smith both skewing younger with his cast, going with a coming-of-age story, but also trying to make a more mature, less dick-and-fart joke-focused movie. But with how disappointed I've been with modern era Smith, I expected a misfire. The only question was what kind of misfire. What I did not expect was to be charmed with a delightful, simple coming-of-age tale mixed with some sweet teenage romance and some semi-autobiographical elements, set against the backdrop of movies and the impact they can have on the lives of young people. Is it an original movie? No. Just about every element here has been done somewhere else, but expecting originality in a movie is a bar you'll likely rarely clear. As long as something is done well and done honestly, it shouldn't matter if the subject matter is well-trodden ground. The 4:30 Movie may be stuff you've seen before, but the honesty and sweetness contained therein carries the day. A movie like this wouldn't work if the cast wasn't believable as a group of friends, and for me, the cast was pitch perfect. The three young men felt like real people, with distinct personalities that balanced each other out; the brainy, slightly nerdy nice guy in Brian, the womanizing cool guy Burny, and the quiet weird one Belly. Into this dynamic comes the worst possible thing that can happen to a band of bros -- a GIRL. Brian's long-time crush, Melody, whom he's asked out on a date to one of the movies the trio are gonna see that day. This and the resulting misadventures spark the journey of these boys seeing each other not as members of their trio, but as individuals, and the secrets they harbor. Again, not very original, but its done with so much earnestness and authenticity, I couldn't help but be taken away to my days as a teenager, hanging with my boys, how the dynamic would change when one of us would get a girlfriend, and what that revealed about us as people. You don't have to have been a teenage boy to understand this movie, though. Youth is youth. It could just as well be a trio of girls into which a boy comes in and the story wouldn't be all that dissimilar. Each of the four performers are charming in their own way, but it's most definitely carried by the adorable budding relationship between Brian and Melody. They are as sweet as candy in the best way, not cloying or overbearing, but innocent, learning the complicated landscape of love as they go. This also says a lot about Kevin Smith's maturity as a filmmaker. Sure, there's some toilet humor here, but the emotions carry the day here. More important, there isn't a trace of the jaded cynicism of Gen-X here. These kids are allowed to be kids, to view a day paying for one movie but sneaking into two others as the adventure of a lifetime, to treat building up the courage to ask out your crush as a feat akin to conquering the Mongol hordes. When Brian asks out Melody over the phone and she says yes and he has to say "hang on a moment" so he can silently celebrate like he's won a billion dollar lottery, I dare you not to feel it. You've been there. I've been there. We've all been there, and Kevin Smith's direction captures those moments and the emotions around them and just lets them be. They're not over-produced or saccharine or suffocated with nostalgia. They just happen, and we get to witness them, and thereby relive them. That doesn't mean Smith's direction is without fault, though. He manages to throw up a few bricks over the course of the movie, and they're such unforced errors, they could've only come from a director too close to his own material to see the flaws. The trailers and movies the kids see are fictitious, so Smith filmed scenes for these. Full trailers. And a couple scenes of the movie. These grind The 4:30 Movie to a halt. Are they amusing? Sure, I guess so, especially the one about the nun who has to save an orphanage by becoming a prostitute, but also kills her johns (called, with no maturity whatsoever, Sister Honey Walls). But in a movie that's barely 90 minutes long with credits, these feel like filler to get it up to the run time, and do nothing to move the movie forward. They feel like Family Guy cutaway gags, but with even less connection to the main story. Worse, though, are the reverse pop culture references. Because the movie takes place in the 80's, there's a lot of jokes about things that reference things we know in the future, such as a joke about Bill Cosby being a comedian who will always be beloved household treasure, or how Star Wars will thankfully never expand past the original trilogy into prequels or TV shows that follow side characters. These come off less as jokes and more as a bitter pop culture nerd taking pot-shots at something that has let him down. If you want to do that, Kevin, do it on your Twitter, not in your movie. But that's modern Kevin Smith. He can't help doing some high-horse naval gazing. It's annoying and stupid and unnecessary, but it's hardly the worst crime, and it certainly doesn't drag down The 4:30 Movie to an unwatchable or objectionable state. I came into this expecting another dirge from a director well past his prime but too up his own ass to see it, and instead I got the best movie he's made in twenty years. I don't know if this is the beginning of a resurgence or a delightful one-off. I don't care. I'm just going to enjoy a filmmaker I loved as a younger man coming back and reminding me why he was so good, and what it was like to be young.