Mallrats

A comedy full of absurd jokes, which could work better if they weren't so aimed at niche audiences that most people don't really belong to. From the same hand that gave us “Clerks” (director and screenwriter Kevin Smith) came this bizarre comedy, centered on two teenagers who have just lost their girlfriends. It is already known that we are going to see a film that is, to say the least, unorthodox and full of light-hearted jokes, allusions to pop culture and elements that would be easy to identify for the youth of the time. Maybe that's why the humor hardly works clearly: I could still understand most of the jokes minimally but, for example, I don't know anything about comics and all the jokes about that are unintelligible to me. I believe the same thing happens to a lot of people: we are not part of the target audience and the feeling is that of a somewhat dated, niche film that has not aged very well. The script has its moments: there are several conflicting plots, some of which (the boy obsessed with a painting where everyone sees a sailboat, for example) are very stupid and seem out of context. In fact, there seems to be no possible context for them! The same cannot be said about the main plots of the two couples at odds. We can say that they are absurd, but this is normal in the case of a movie that uses absurdity for a jocular purpose. For the rest, and even considering that I've seen better, it's not a film that I can say I hated seeing, although I don't intend to see it again. Claire Forlani, very young and beautiful, plays her role with panache alongside Jeremy London, Shannen Doherty and Jason Lee, three young promises who would not have a bright future as actors, even though they remain active and working. It's fair to say that everyone made their own effort and left a positive mark, but it's not fair to forget Stan Lee's contribution, in a very honorable special appearance, and the work developed by Ben Affleck, Michael Rooker, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith. It's one of those films where the auxiliary cast has almost as much weight and relevance to the final product as the four protagonists. In fact, a large part of what makes the film work after so many years is, precisely, the quality of the characters and the way they manage to please us.