Directed By Kevin Smith

Starring – Siena Agudong, Austin Zajur, Kate Micucci

The Plot – Writer-director Kevin Smith presents his most personal film to date with this coming-of-age story, set in the summer of 1986, that follows three sixteen-year-old friends who spend their Saturdays sneaking into movies at the local Cineplex. When one of the guys (Zajur) invites the girl (Agudong) of his dreams to see an R-rated film, all hilarity breaks loose, as a self-important theater manager (Ken Jeong) and teen rivalries interfere with his best-laid plans.

Rated R for sexual content

The 4:30 Movie Official Trailer (Domestic) (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

After two tours of humiliating horror, one tour of naive nepotism, and a nostalgia reprisal, Kevin Smith returns with an original property that evidently feels near and dear to his heart, combining his love for cinema with the immortality of being a teenager, which easily feels like his most inspiring work in nearly a decade. Stripping everything down but the star-studded cameos, Smith sets a majority of his film inside of a cheap and poorly run cinema, bringing all of the pop culture references and embellishment for the arts that manifests in the effortless chemistry of our primary protagonist and his duo of best buds, as they embark on the same kind of single day adventure that made ‘Clerks’ and ‘Mallrats’ staples of the Kevin Smith fandom, with unpredictable elements that threaten to rain on their parade, while forcing the trio to evolve and expand towards the mission at hand. While the film is a bit dejected in being a story of two extremely differing halves, with the first half being raunchy humor, the second half and primarily the third act climax, is easily the highlight of the film for me, where not only does Smith grow and evolve the tone naturally into the kind of romantic comedy that he can craft in his sleep, while also bringing with it the same kind of profoundly sincere messages about the value of friendship and self-worth that somehow manifests itself in the depths of the material that refuses to take itself too seriously, in turn appraising a touching value to the engagement that sneaks up on audiences like it always tends to do with Smith’s works. In addition to this, while the characters weren’t exactly my cup of tea, the performances and primarily the dynamic and lived-in chemistry between Zajur, Reed Northcup and Nicholas Cirillo feels right in-tuned with the kind of memories between friends that Smith so evidently holds dear to his heart, where humility and horniness feel like crossroads in characters speaking a uniquely distinctive language with one another that only they can communicate through. Zajur definitely gets the primary focus here, brandishing a wonderment and quirky appeal to a character that is so obviously Smith, but there’s ample time for each of them to shine with their respective talents, especially Agudong, who feels like a breath of fresh air when she finally arrives to the fray of elements that are out of her control, as a result of guilt by association. Agudong has such a glowing warmth and radiance to her demeanor that feels decades ahead of her cinematic inexperience, and while her and Zajur didn’t quite have the combustible chemistry that I expected in focusing the plot primarily around their blossoming romance, Agudong cements so much range to her variety of emotional impulses during shifting talking points that feels like a hybrid of Jessica Alba and Vanessa Hudgens. Lastly, much of the 80’s ambiance is certainly enacted in the simplicities and subtleties of the production designs, but for my money the electronic score of the great Bear McCreery simply can’t be understated, especially alongside the aforementioned climax of the movie, with synth compositions that feel like they could be borrowed from any John Hughes film, without deliberately ripping off those movies. It’s not often that you brag about a score in a Kevin Smith film, but the grizzled veteran director has certainly done his homework in assembling someone who can bottle that particular 80’s atmosphere in audible form, and as a result truly hammers home those aforementioned profound sentiments that materialize so fluidly as a result of the tremendous attention to detail that Bear enacts in such intimate compositions.

NEGATIVES

Most people think unfunny material is the worst thing that can happen to a comedy, but actually it’s annoyance, and that unfortunate reality was summoned in everything from the material to the characters, which made this such a difficult obstacle to continuously remain invested in. Starting with the gags, the script does attain a couple of noteworthy laughs in the eccentric deliveries of Jeong, but mostly the deliveries unload themselves without any kind of emphasis or impact to their deliveries, especially in running the well of originality so dry almost immediately in the 78 minute duration. Between quoting movie lines endlessly and constructing these eye-rolling predictions for the future (Like one character assessing that Bill Cosby is a national treasure), the script has no qualms about adopting repetition to its qualities, and though it’s bad enough for this creativity to overwhelm itself by the 20 minute mark of the movie, it’s so much worse when the evidential improvisation of the actors stretches their responses for far too long, without any kind of edit to maintain some form of momentum that might’ve been garnered. As for the characters, they’re crudely obnoxious and selfish like most teenagers, sure, but never appealing in ways that makes me want to spend a feature length movie with them, with some kind of charisma or infectious energy to what they’re pulling from. It hurts enough that the script spends so little time evolving them or utilizing some form of compelling backstory, but it’s even worse when they share a screen simultaneously, and we’re asked to endure their off-beat shenanigans, directly undercutting any semblance of urgency in the narrative or concern in their conflicts that makes the engagement fall so flat with entertainment value. This goes double for the obvious padding that takes shape between these awful fictional movies transpiring on the screen within the screen, which feel like they run for an eternity while intruding on the dilemma of our protagonists. If it showed a brief ten second clip or two of what our characters are watching, then it would’ve been a fine enough diversion, but it interrupts the progress of the narrative constantly by switching it out with this awful kind of D-movie humor that never landed, even with the great Diedrich Bader acting within it, making the movie feel like it barely hits the bare minimum of accepted run times for feature length films, which makes so much of the material in the foreground of the storytelling feel forgettably bland, even by Smith’s recent cinematic offerings. ‘The 4:30 Movie’ also commits my single biggest sin with period pieces, in that the historical accuracies of the visual cues don’t always line up, which is particularly troubling considering Smith grew up during such an age. There are many examples throughout the film, and some of them even involve spoilers, so I will trend away from those, and instead articulate that movies like ‘Fletch’ and ‘Rocky IV’ didn’t come out in 1986, they came out in 1985, so the theater having a poster of the former, while two characters discuss how they saw the latter in the previous week, doesn’t fully line up to the legitimacy of the time frame, and while probably a small thing to most people, it’s major to someone like me, who tries to keep away from obvious hinderances to distract from immersing me into an established timely setting. Finally, the movie has a strange ending that makes it feel like the production ran out of film, instead of satisfyingly resolved matters, with one of the most abrupt credits scroll that I have seen since 2020’s ‘The Turning’. If that statement doesn’t scare you enough, you should know that this abruption is made even sloppier by an epilogue that happens literally one minute after the credits roll, and though it involves a much more satisfying ending, especially with the fan service of one familiar setting to Kevin Smith movies, it makes me wonder why they didn’t just tack this scene onto the film’s ending in the first place, especially since the first ending resolves itself inside of an interaction and dynamic with no kind of uncertainty or dramatic impact to the characters involved.

OVERALL
‘The 4:30 Movie’ doesn’t quite sink to the disparaging depths of Smith’s Canadian trilogy, but it still feels far from the apex of career first act efforts from Smith classics, which balanced meaningful characters and comedic consistency so fluidly. Despite its flaws, it’s undoubtedly a film that feels deeply personal to Smith, especially with memories too strange to be fictional, and though the excessive indulgences of comedy crashes embarrassingly, the heart of a third act shift into romantic territory definitely proves something profoundly integral to what was initially missing from these characters and proceedings, all in hopes of the next Smith effort being the one that returns him to the glory that he deserves.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+