Review of Mallrats (1995) by Xgary X — 16 Feb 2010

Two suburban slackers are both dumped by their girlfriends on the same day, so they decide to hang out at the local mall to cheer themselves up. And that's it. Kevin Smith's second film obviously had a much bigger budget, and to be honest all it did was take away any excuses he had for the severe lack of skill he displays behind the camera.

He desperately tries to recapture the easygoing charm of Clerks, but to be honest that film was seriously propped up by the Gen X zeitgeist of the time in which it was made and that being taken away, the whole thing just falls flat on its face.

The dialogue is clumsy and unnatural and peppered with Smith's trademark pop culture references, but without any semblance of structure, plot or even ideas to hang them on, it just comes across as an aimless, witless, self indulgent sitcom with some studio pleasing schmaltz tacked on the end to try and paper over the complete lack of substance.

There's no insight into the characters or their relationships and as a result they all come across as self obsessed, immature, obnoxious jerks. Not as spectacularly dreadful as Clerks 2, but it's childish, vacuous and the laughs are next to non existent.