“Saaaay … would you like a chocolate covered pretzel? They’re a little melty, but boy are they exquisite.”

Another I thought I’d reviewed more recently than ‘04 The main thing I’d forgotten about this movie is Claire Forlani and Shannon Doherty. Throw in the short Joey Lauren Adams appearance and I think you’ve got at least the sexiest Kevin Smith movie if not the funniest. I didn’t exactly bring the house down on this viewing like the one below but there are tons of moments that still make me laugh out loud more than a lot of Smith’s output, which more often than not I like more for the emotional content than the humour. This one on the contrary is pretty much all about the funny – the ending is stirring in that cheesy Eighties way that it’s going for, but it’s not the deeper territory that Smith has, I don’t care what anyone else says, touched in his other movies. I still haven’t seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back since the review below – I seem to be avoiding it – I really don’t think it’s as consistently on the nose as this one, though. The Jay and Bob storyline here alone is worth seeing the movie for, Kevin Smith doing the cartoon acting, playing to the camera completely, arguably better than he’s done anywhere else. It’s often spoken of as a somehow lesser work of Smith’s but I think it might just be the most essential companion to any given one of the others.

June 10th, 2004:

I must’ve been numb the last time I saw this movie which is why I’m filing this under “Virgin Viewing,” because I damn near died laughing the night I watched it this time.

I’ll probably eat these words the next time I see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back because I’ll likely love that one on a second viewing just as much – but Mallrats is as funny as J&SB should have been.

Does it have a point, a story even? I could hardly tell you. But you have Silent Bob continuously busting in on Joey Lauren Adams trying to change, the poor fat guy trying to see the stereo image, “Oooh, a sailboat!” (“There is no Easter bunny!!”), Jay and Silent Bob beating up the Easter bunny, and plenty more.

Put it this way – if movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist can be described as, “an assault of horrors,” then Mallrats is an assault of comedy.