director/screenwriter
Kevin Smith
producer
Scott Mosier
cinematographer
David Klein
music
Dave Pirner
editors
Scott Mosier
Kevin Smith
cast
Ben Affleck (Holden)
Joey Lauren Adams (Alyssa)
Jason Lee (Banky)
Dwight Ewell (Hooper)
Jason Mewes (Jay)
Kevin Smith (Silent Bob)
Guinevere Turner (Singer)
Brian O'Halloran (Exec #1)
Matt Damon (Exec #2)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 111m
u.s.
release: April 4, 1997
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other kevin
smith films
reviewed on this website:
- clerks
- dogma
- jay
& silent bob strike back
- jersey
girl
- mallrats
|
Three
years back, Kevin Smith blasted out of obscurity with his rude,
invigorating debut Clerks,
a comedy everyone loved -- well, everyone of a certain age. Smith
followed it with Mallrats,
which many people hated; I liked it. Now comes Chasing Amy,
in which Smith reveals the romantic heart beneath his grungy
exterior. It's been widely acclaimed as a mature leap forward.
I'm not so sure. I laughed a lot -- the movie isn't bad. But
I hope Smith grows out of this new maturity soon.
Smith's basic idea -- which dawned on him while he was hanging
out with Guinevere Turner, star of the lesbian romance Go
Fish (she has a cameo here) -- seems custom-built for hot
debates at the coffeehouse: What if a hetero guy and a gay woman
fell in love? The hero, comic-book artist Holden (Ben Affleck),
is appearing at a convention when he meets Alyssa Jones (Joey
Lauren Adams), who puts out her own comic. He's instantly infatuated
with her. Why? Because he's narcissistic, I'd say: She's a female
version of himself. Such is Gen-X love.
Holden soon learns that Alyssa is more like him than he bargained
for: He's into women, and so is she. Alyssa is a guy's femme
fantasy of a lesbian: fun-loving, club-hopping, one of the guys.
(When does she have time to do her comic?) They become fast friends,
which irritates Holden's best buddy and partner Banky (Jason
Lee in the funniest performance), a cynical homophobe who feels
threatened by Alyssa. Before long, Holden can't take it any more;
he blurts out his love for Alyssa, who recoils but then gives
in to her own feelings for him.
At this point, Chasing Amy seems ready to dig into the
problems of hetero-lesbo romance. But amazingly, Smith all but
drops the lesbian angle. The movie somehow becomes about Holden's
shock at Alyssa's wild sexual past (it turns out she's been with
more than her share of guys, too). Holden gets uptight, Alyssa
delivers anguished speeches about her confused youth, and the
dialogue (I never dreamed I'd say this about a Kevin Smith script)
becomes annoying. The psychobabble piles up and buries
the engaging leads; the last act is borderline awful.
What went wrong? A guess: The plot and dialogue play too much
as if Smith is re-enacting past romantic squabbles he's had,
and rewriting them, too. Nobody in real life is this earnestly
articulate. The movie doesn't really resolve its view of female
promiscuity, and Holden's solution (skip to the next paragraph
if you haven't seen the film) is to propose a menage a trois
between him, Alyssa, and the rather baffled Banky. Is he serious,
or is he testing her? If the former, he's an idiot; if the latter,
he's simply cruel. Either way I wound up disliking him.
Like John Waters, Smith is incapable of making an unfunny film
(though Waters has never needed to show us his "heart").
He writes elaborately obscene, hilarious dialogue, and he comes
up with a great goof on the scar contest in Jaws. And
he and Jason Mewes return as the beloved slacker duo Silent Bob
and Jay. Yet even Silent Bob breaks his silence to deliver a
monologue about a lost love. Oh, come on. Can't Kevin
Smith expand his horizons without turning into Sensitive Bob? |
