'The 4:30 Movie' isn't Worth the Price of Admission
How many coming-of-age films can you see before you feel like you've seen them all? Unlike Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade or Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, Kevin Smith presents nothing that we haven't watched before. Mr. Smith has been a real on-and-off filmmaker. He started with a homerun when he made Clerks that helped popularize the mumble core genre to the public outside of the arthouse crowd. His follow-up films in his early career were impressive. Mallrats is a hilarious slacker comedy catered to comic book fans. It even has the most heartfelt cameo from Stan Lee compared to any Marvel film he's appeared in. Dogma was an innocent take on religion. Even Jay and Silent Bob Strike works as an early commentary on internet bully culture.
Somewhere along the way, Smith began to slip. With the exception of his Clerks sequels (although I didn't care for the depressing third one) and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Smith has been on a downward slope. I respect Kevin Smith for challenging himself. But he can't write outside of comedy. Red State is a pseudo-political horror film that bashes its audience over the head with its messaging. Tusk is an ever worse horror attempt. When he fails at comedy, he fails miserably. Yoga Hosers and Jersey Girl certainly didn't win audiences over.
So, how does The 4:30 Movie stack up? Not well. The 4:30 Movie is about Kevin Smith returning to his roots while trying to make something personal. Instead of just making another film where the camera is on a flat angle while people are talking, Smith attempts the coming-of-age genre that's severely lacking originality. The flick is an autobiographical pic that has the nostalgic styling of Stranger Things minus the supernatural elements. Although R-rated, the use of profanity is drastically scaled back compared to most of his other films. I think he's doing it to appeal to a younger audience despite the film being rated R. Unfortunately, a lot of the dialogue is more cringy than snappy. Punctuating this flaw is a cast of annoying characters.
The film stars a group of teens who, to the film's credit, act exactly like obnoxious teens do in real life. The trouble I'd get myself into middle school to high school is similar to what these kids did. With that said, that doesn't make them any less irritating. The film's main character Brian David (Austin Zajur), is a loud-spoken cinephile who can't help but resist making movie references with every other line he has in the movie. That much pop culture banter is fine when it's the side point of the conversation. Not for the entirety of a character's runtime. It's as if all of Clerks was just Dante and Randal talking about the independent contractors assigned to the second Death Star. It's fun for a three-and-a-half-minute conversation. It would be grueling if that were the dialog of the entire film.
Brian's friends aren't any less bothersome, especially Burny (Nicholas Cirillo). To say Burny got on my nerves would be an understatement. I couldn't stand Burny. He's a stereotypical Jersey Italian sleazeball who may as well have walked off the set from The Sopranos. Burny's a condescending playboy who made me wish he would exit the film. To Nicholas Cirillo's credit, he's vastly more intelligent than his character. I could tell after my interview with him, along with the rest of the cast you can find here. He did go outside of his skin a little bit; sadly it didn't work since the character was so poorly written. In fact, everyone isn't well-written. They lack nuance. They're all one-note adolescents. The last of the friends is Belly (Reed Northrup). Belly is the shy kid in the group. He has a moment to shine in the film where he speaks his mind, but the line delivery from Northrup makes the emotional moment flop like a dead fish.
The plot of the film is very familiar to any rom-com. Brian has a crush on Melody Barnegat (Siena Agudong). The past summer, Brian and Melody had a brief romantic fling in her swimming pool, but not much happened after that. Trying to pick up where he left off, Brian calls Melody to set a date with her for a 4:30 showtime of Astro Blaster. The 4:30 Movie plays more like a series of events leading up to Brian's date than a real concise story with any character progression. The one character with the most depth is a wrestler named Major Murder (Sam Richardson). We only meet Major Murder once as he gives an inspirational speech to Belly who looks up to him. Everyone else is a caricature. Especially the movie theater's manager, Mike, played by Ken Jeong, who screams every word he's given in the film like nails on a chalkboard.
To make everything even worse is a weak love story which has no real chemistry between the characters. Siena Agudong plays her character like a cute girl without much of a personality other than being kind. It's not her fault, as Smith doesn't write much of a persona for her. She's simply a goal for Brian to achieve. The only thing they share in common is that they both love movies. Otherwise, we know nothing about these two, rendering them dull.
I know this is a Kevin Smith film, so I shouldn't be expecting a deep character drama. That doesn't excuse the fact that Smith has done better in the past. Clerks was about two guys who, throughout the years, established a sense of belonging when others deemed them failures. Chasing Amy was about a man in love with a lesbian who can never be with him. The list goes on. The cast of The 4:30 Movie has nothing interesting about them to make me watch them. The movie needed someone in the writer's room to redraft Kevin Smith's screenplay so there could be something more to the film other than random character banter and an emotionless love story. Thankfully, the film's extremely short runtime makes the dull trip to the theater manageable.
The 4:30 Movie Releases in Theaters on September 13. 2024
