Mallrats, 1995.
Directed by Kevin Smith.
Starring Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Shannen Doherty, Claire Forlani, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, Joey Lauren Adams, and Michael Rooker.
SYNOPSIS:
Kevin Smith’s 1995 sophomore effort, Mallrats, arrives on 4K Ultra HD courtesy of Arrow, which included the theatrical and extended cuts along with a ton of new and old bonus material. If you have Arrow’s 2020 Bluray, you may not feel a strong desire to upgrade, but if you’re like me and you’re just now grabbing this movie on home video, it’s a worthwhile purchase.
Do teenagers still wander aimlessly through shopping malls? I certainly spent part of my teen years in the 1980s doing that, but none of my kids (ages 31, 21, and 16) have done so, and I’m not aware of any of their friends doing it.
Perhaps Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, his 1995 follow-up to his break-out indie hit Clerks, is a relic of a bygone age. It’s certainly an ode to everything he was into as a teen and in his twenties, including cute girls, comic books, video games, and trying to figure out a path in life. And he can lay claim to putting Stan Lee in a movie before doing so became a big deal.
Mallrats introduces us to a pair of friends, T.S. Quint (Jeremy London) and Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee), a pair of misfits whose bungling interactions with their girlfriends leaves both of them without romance in their lives. In T.S.’s case, he was planning to propose to his girlfriend Brandi Svenning (Claire Forlani) during an upcoming trip to Florida, but now she has not only dumped him, but she’s going to be a contestant on a Dating Game-style show to be filmed at the local mall.
Meanwhile, Brodie is lamenting the fact that his girlfriend Rene (Shannen Doherty) has dumped him too, but, c’mon, she’s completely out of his league. (Right?) When Brodie and T.S. head to the local mall to try to disrupt the game show, Brodie discovers that Rene is now dating Shannon Hamilton (Ben Affleck), the manager of a clothing store there. Shannon is your typical bully.
Of course, they run into Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) at the mall and enlist them in their plan, which may work as long as the four of them stay far away from the hard-ass head security guard and Brandi’s father, who’s producing the show in the hope of selling it to some network executives. As you might imagine, hare-brained schemes are hatched and plans go awry.
Whereas the rough nature of the filmmaking worked in Clerks, here it sticks out like a sore thumb. My sense of it is that making a movie in color, with a (relatively) big budget, created higher expectations that Smith wasn’t yet capable of meeting. However, Mallrats still has its charm, and my wife and I laughed more than we probably should have at the “stink palm” bit.
Arrow previously issued this movie on Blu-ray in 2020, but now they’ve gone back to the well to upgrade it to 4K Ultra HD. You could certainly argue that the Blu-ray was good enough, and I don’t think you’d be wrong, but if you don’t own this one on home video yet, or if you really need it in 4K, you can’t go wrong with this new edition.
Like the Blu-ray, this 4K Ultra HD set also includes an extended cut of the movie that Smith and his producing partner Scott Mosier assembled for a DVD release around 15 years ago. The pair introduce that version in a rambling, very amusing 11-minute clip, noting that there are some jarring cuts in the new footage because frames were lost during the original editing process.
The new version of the film runs about 30 minutes longer than the theatrical cut. It includes a new opening sequence as well as many altered scenes that have been lengthened and/or had dialogue restored. A few other new scenes were added too. Honestly, I only noticed one or two jarring cuts.
Smith and Mosier also introduce the 94-minute theatrical cut, which includes a group commentary track featuring them, Lee, Affleck, Mewes, and archivist Vincent Pereira. As group tracks go, especially ones featuring these folks, it’s a bit all over the place, but Affleck does his best to keep everyone on task and even invites the others to mock his character.
The disc with the theatrical cut also features a big batch of interviews, some from earlier DVD editions and others from Arrow’s 2020 Blu-ray. The second disc has the extended cut, along with some stills galleries, a very short making-of featurette from the old days, and nearly two hours of dailies that are presented in VHS video quality.
The previous Arrow edition had a TV version of the film that’s missing here, but I’m not sure why anyone other than a completist would lament its loss. Mallrats is a fun film, but it’s also not one that I feel the need to watch multiple times in different versions and compare them.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
