In 1994, a low-budget movie called Clerks revealed the hilarious side of working in a service-oriented job. Writer/director Kevin Smith introduced the world to Dante, a convenience store clerk and Randall, a video store clerk, and their bizarre ways of dealing with their clientele. Although the acting was occasionally weak and the dialogue extremely off-color, Smith made an ultimately satisfying and wickedly funny movie.
Smith’s follow-up is 1995’s Mallrats which, with a larger budget and some big-name talent (Shannen Doherty, Priscilla Barnes and Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee, for example), attempts to take on similar situations but from the other side of the counter. Unfortunately, Smith can’t muster the same comic ingenuity from a supposedly superior cast.
The plot again centers around two hapless Generation X’ers, but this time they’re named T.S. (Jeremy London) and Brodie (Jason Lee). After they both get dumped by their girlfriends on the same day, they decide to mope around the local mall. Upon meeting up with hoodlums Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), two characters from Clerks, they conspire to disrupt a game show broadcast from the mall and get their girlfriends back.
The humor is in the same reference-based, fresh-from-the-bathroom-wall vein as Clerks, but this time it comes across as strained and recycled. Maybe as a result of the larger budget, Mallrats takes the low road to easy laughs via scenes where things get destroyed and broken. The results are frequently unfunny and make the film appear desperate to appeal to the mainstream. Jay and Silent Bob provided some of the funniest moments in Clerks, but now are more cartoonish and less edgy.
Clerks was a film that easily appealed to intelligent people stuck in thankless jobs. Mallrats seems aimed at those that annoy intelligent people stuck in thankless jobs. It’s a big disappointment.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
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