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Originally posted by: Bossk
See, I don't think Chasing Amy was meant to be an all-out comedy. It's meant to show how KS learned from a relationship in which he acted like Ben Affleck does. Amy is more about the story than the comedy. KS didn't "forget" anything. He was trying to make a minor departure from what he had done before.
And it is a funny movie as well. I don't personally think that anything in Mallrats compares to the Comiccon nubian fight between Banky and Hooper. That is just classic Kevin Smith.
Clerks is a damn good movie, but Mallrats was piss poor by the standards established by Clerks and then followed by Chasing Amy and, even, Dogma. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Mallrats every once in a while, but it is the worst of the Jersey Quintilogy (is that a word?).
Sorry to come back to this topic which is really off-topic, but I haven't checked this thread in a while and just wanted to respond to Bossk here:
Bossk, I see your point, but if that is the case then the movie was mismarketed. It was sold to us as a comedy. And while he has the right to make a departure in style from his previous films, and has a right to say whatever he wants in his films, I found the film preachy, condescending, and pompous. I went to be entertained not to have politically correct homosexual propaganda shoved down my throat. I don't go to the movies to be preached to. I don't care about KS's little pet social engineering projects, I didn't go to watch propaganda, I went to be entertained. If I had known that the movie was going to be so preachy and would focus more on gays and lesbians than comedy I wouldn't have paid my hard-earned cash to see it. So I feel the advertising was a little deceptive as it depicted this mis-matched relationship as the backdrop for comedy where, really the comedy was the backdrop for the relationship story, which took on a socio-political tone that I found condescending. Hey, I don't care about gays and lesbians, they can do as they please, but it's really annoying to go to a movie to be entertained and wind up watching a 2 hour infomercial about them, which I had to pay to see.
And, where Clerks was clearly superior to Mallrats, I disagree that Chasing Amy or even Dogma was even in the same league (comedy wise) as Mallrats. I feel Mallrats was truer to the style and spirit of Clerks, which was a light-hearted albeit raunchy comedy about everyday minutae. Mallrats may not have had production values as high as Chasing Amy and Dogma, but I feel it was a purer comedy and truer to the Clerks style.
I incidently found Dogma kind of preachy as well. Keven Smith is waaaay too obvious and clumsy about putting dialog supporting his personal politics into his comedies. Perfect example in Dogma: the part where the main character thought that Jay and Silent Bob were "some kind of pro-life nutjobs" or however she said it, and Jay responds, "Hell no! We support a woman's right to choose!" WTF?!?! This is coming from this character who is a juvenile delinquent fuck-up drug dealing drunken idiot and is played that way for laughs. But then we have him standing up for some political cause?! KS just did that because people see Jay and Silent Bob as "cool" so if they express this opinion that that opinion will be "cool." That was the most ham-handed, clumsy and blatantly obvious attempt to inject ideology into a movie ever. I can't believe that more people didn't pick up on it. I find that kind of thing offensive because it is patronizing and uncalled for. Just stick to comedy, and if you're going to be political make it funny. That line wasn't funny it was stilted and was shoehorned in there. KS insults our intelligence when he tries shit like that. There were plenty of other things like that in Dogma (and Chasing Amy) but none of the other stuff came close to that instance in it's brazenness and clumsyness.
Don't get me wrong, Chasing Amy and Dogma had funny parts but they were the worst and second worst films in that series respectively. Clerks and Mallrats are the best of the series, because Mallrats stayed true to the spirit and style of Clerks. The Clerks animated series was good too, and I'd reccommend that to any fan of KS's films over CA and Dogma.