A Blast from the Past (or a Blast of Something Else)
Get ready to dust off your flannel shirts and prepare your eardrums for a metric ton of 1990s slacker whining because the local video store shelves, or whatever digital cloud we are renting things from these days, just got hit with a heavy dose of teenage aimlessness. The film in question is Director Kevin Smith’s sophomore effort, a little cinematic experiment from 1995 that asks the burning question: What happens when you take a bunch of college-aged kids who refuse to get a job and trap them in a suburban shopping mall for two hours? It is a story about heartbreak, comic books, and the absolute refusal of yesterday’s youth, who are now probably filing for their own retirement benefits, to grow up and do something useful with their lives.
For the folks who missed this the first time around because you were actually working for a living, the setup is simpler than a two-piece puzzle. We follow two buddies who both managed to get dumped by their girlfriends on the exact same morning. Naturally, instead of doing some soul-searching or checking the classified ads, they decide the best cure for their emotional trauma is to go hang out by the food court and the comic shop. It is a snapshot of an era when the mall was the center of the universe, filled with colorful degenerates, overzealous security guards, and a complete lack of smart phones to distract anyone from their own deep, profound laziness.
Review by Ben Dover
Let me tell you something, I am sixty years old and I usually don’t understand what the hell was wrong with the kids in the nineties. This movie should be a perfect example of the breakdown of the American work ethic, featuring two masterminds who go to the mall to complain to a guy named Silent Bob who looks like he hasn’t taken a shower since the bicentennial. But I am going to shock my doctor, my wife, and probably myself by saying this: against all odds and my own naturally sour disposition, I absolutely love this stupid movie.
It has a low-brow, relentless charm that hooks you by the throat, mostly because the dialogue moves faster than a stray dog with a stolen steak. Jason Lee plays Brodie Bruce, a fast-talking, comic-book-obsessed parasite who lives with his mother. By all accounts, I should hate this kid. He represents everything wrong with the youth. But the actor has so much manic energy and delivers his insults with such pure, poetic perfection that I found myself cheering for the lazy bastard. I can respect a man who knows how to tear someone down verbally, even if he is wearing a blue shirt over a gray long-sleeve shirt like he can’t figure out how to dress himself.
Now, because I am me, I still have to complain about the stuff that gave me an ulcer. The plot relies entirely on these kids trying to sabotage a dating game show being filmed in the middle of the mall. A game show! It is hosted by a guy who looks like a cut-rate game show host from the seventies, and the entire premise makes no sense. They spend half the movie running away from a security guard named Lafours, who takes his job way too seriously for a guy making minimum wage protecting a Foot Locker. The logic is totally non-existent, and the movie is incredibly smug about its own pop culture references.
But sweet mother of mercy, the sheer chaos of the third act is beautiful. When they finally get around to ruining that game show, the execution is a work of art. It is a garbage fire, but it is a perfectly coordinated garbage fire. The movie manages to be crude, offensive, and completely ridiculous, yet it makes me laugh out loud every single time. It completely captures the stupid magic of hanging out at a mall before the internet ruined the world. I still hate that Brodie gets a happy ending without ever getting a real job, but the ride is so funny I just don’t care.
The Two Cuts: Theatrical vs. Extended
Now, if you go looking for this thing on your streaming applications, you are going to find out there are famously two versions of this film. You have the original 1995 theatrical cut and the bloated, multi-headed beast known as the extended director’s cut that adds about thirty minutes of footage back into the mix. Let me save you some time and a lot of aspirin: stick to the theatrical cut. The extended version completely ruins the pacing and changes the whole beginning of the movie for the worse.
Kevin Smith himself has openly admitted that the theatrical version is the superior cut, even calling the extended edition “the version that never should have been” when he introduced it on the DVD. He rightly pointed out that any movie called Mallrats that takes thirty damn minutes to actually get to the mall is fundamentally broken.
In the theatrical version, the movie starts fast with the two guys getting dumped right away, and boom, they are at the mall. In the extended cut, there is a giant, painfully long intro sequence where they are running around a university campus, trying to stop a girl from doing a broadcast, and T.S. accidentally shoots at the governor with a prop gun. It is completely unfunny, it drags on forever, and it makes the main characters look like actual criminals instead of just pathetic slackers. The studio was 100% right to hack that garbage out of the theatrical release. Some of the smaller character moments added later in the mall are okay, but that alternate opening is a total disaster that kills the comedy dead before it even gets to the shopping center.
The Star Studded Cast (Sort Of)
- Jason Lee (Brodie Bruce): This guy used to be a professional skateboarder, which explains why he looks like he doesn’t own a hairbrush. He carries the movie on his back with a non-stop barrage of complaints. He is hilarious, but you will still want to slap him.
- Jeremy London (T.S. Quint): The actual hero of the movie, though he has the personality of a wet piece of cardboard. He is trying to win back his girl, but you spend the whole movie wondering why she bothered with him in the first place.
- Shannen Doherty (Rene Mosier): Fresh off her television drama days, she plays Brodie’s exasperated girlfriend. She spends most of the film looking like she regretted signing the contract, which is honestly very relatable.
- Claire Forlani (Brandis Svenning): T.S.’s girlfriend who gets dragged into her dad’s game show. She is nice to look at, but she doesn’t have much to do besides look disappointed in her boyfriend.
- Ben Affleck (Shannon Hamilton): Before he was Batman, he was playing a colossal jerk who manages a clothing store for young punks. He plays a bully beautifully, probably because he just had to look at his own terrible wardrobe.
- Michael Rooker (Jared Svenning): The father of the bride who hates T.S. with a passion. Rooker is always great at playing intense psychopaths, and here he just channels that into a dad who really loves game shows.
- Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes (Jay and Silent Bob): The resident mall idiots who spend their time trying to break things and sell illegal substances. Jay speaks in a language that consists mostly of swear words, and Silent Bob says nothing until the end, which was a relief to my ears.
Special Effects
If you are looking for starships exploding or giant monsters eating skyscrapers, you are looking at the wrong movie. The special effects in this thing look like they were funded by a high school bake sale. We have a stage that collapses, some very questionable stunt doubles jumping off a mezzanine level, and a bunch of grappling hooks that look like they were bought at a hardware store down the street. The biggest effect is a blueprint of the mall that looks like it was drawn with crayons. It is cheap and tacky, but it fits the whole trashy vibe perfectly.
Music
The soundtrack is a relentless assault of mid-nineties alternative rock and skate punk that will either make you nostalgic for the days of cassette tapes or make you want to stick a fork in your ear. It is loud, it is angrier than it needs to be for a movie about a shopping center, and it features a lot of guys yelling over distorted guitars. It serves its purpose to remind you every five seconds that this movie was made in 1995, just in case the giant cell phones didn’t give it away.
Rating
4.0 out of 5 Stars
It is a loud, dirty, completely undisciplined mess of a movie that features characters I would actively avoid in real life. But the dialogue is sharp, the jokes land hard, and Jason Lee’s performance is a masterclass in comic timing. It gets four stars from me, and I hate myself for it.
Complete Synopsis and Plot Breakdown
The movie kicks off with T.S. Quint getting dumped by his girlfriend, Brandis, because her father is putting her on a television dating show and T.S. threw a fit about it. At the exact same time, his best friend Brodie Bruce gets kicked to the curb by his girlfriend, Rene, because Brodie cares more about his comic books and video games than her. With nothing better to do and their hearts completely broken, the two geniuses decide to head to the local mall to drown their sorrows in food court grease and see if they can figure out a way to get their women back.
Once at the mall, they encounter a bizarre ecosystem of characters. Brodie discovers that Rene has already moved on to Shannon Hamilton, a slick manager of a men’s clothing store who plans on taking her to a very uncomfortable place in a Volkswagen. Meanwhile, T.S. finds out that the dating game show, hosted by a ridiculous guy, is actually being filmed right there in the mall’s main court that very evening. They realize they need professional help to ruin the show and win back the girls, so they enlist the mall’s resident slackers and part-time criminals, Jay and Silent Bob.
The middle of the movie is just a series of ridiculous subplots and misadventures. Jay and Silent Bob try multiple failed plans to destroy the game show stage, including using a tape recorder and attempting to fly through the air like Batman. Brodie spends a good chunk of time trying to look at a Magic Eye poster because he can’t see the hidden sailboat, which drives him entirely insane. They also cross paths with a guy named Oliver who is obsessed with the movie Jaws, and a comic book creator named Stan Lee who shows up just to give Brodie some love advice that involves a lot of superhero metaphors.
The grand finale happens during the live broadcast of the dating show. Thanks to some heavy intervention by Jay and Silent Bob, the show goes completely off the rails. They manage to knock out the contestants and replace them with T.S. and Brodie. During the live broadcast, Brodie uses the microphone to expose Shannon’s disgusting true nature and his plans involving German automobiles, which ruins his chances with Rene forever. T.S. wins the game, gets Brandis back, and her father is left humiliated on live television. The movie ends with the couples reunited, Shannon going to jail, and Brodie becoming a famous talk-show host, proving once and for all that sometimes losers win.
5 Famous Quotes
“I love the smell of commerce in the morning.”
“That kid is back on the escalator!”
“Say, would you like a chocolate covered pretzel?”
“Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things.”
“Fly, fat ass, fly!”
5 Interesting Facts
- The film was a massive box office bomb when it first came out, making back only a small fraction of its budget, before becoming a massive hit on VHS tape when people could watch it at home.
- The legendary comic book writer Stan Lee made one of his very first movie cameos in this film, way before he was doing it in every single Marvel movie on the planet.
- The mall used for filming wasn’t even in New Jersey where the director is from; they had to fly the whole crew out to Minnesota to find a mall that would let them run around like idiots at night.
- Ben Affleck’s character wears a very specific, ugly brown jacket throughout the movie that was actually the director’s personal coat because the wardrobe department ran out of money.
- The character of Brodie Bruce was named after a combination of the movie Jaws chief Brody and the real name of the comic book character the Hulk, Bruce Banner.
Photos
Trailer
Review Notes
(My notes from watching)
The only part of this extended opening that is interesting is watching Rooker lose his mind and just go full perv on the governors leg
I love the comic book opening credits, great artwork
I did not need to see Rookers ass and ballsack, some things are better left to the imagination
I cant see those damn magic eye pictures either, I get it.
Affleck delivers as an asshole, I feel like he is playing his younger self a little (“No respect for people with no shopping agenda” is a great line perfectly delivered. (its hard to see him as Batman at this moment)
Jay and silent Bob beating the Easter Bunny is hilarious especially when the kids turn on them.
Vulcan Nerve Pinch?
Silent Bob with the Batarrang (amongst other stuff) LOL
What a cheap transparent way to get boobs in your movie with a completely unnecessary topless psychic scene
The Stan Lee cameo here is chef’s kiss
Bob using the force (Jedi mind trick) was quite funny
Stan Lee seeing the sailboat instantly… LOL
Jason Lee is amazing here, he is so unrecognizable young vs older he has changed a lot over the years.