Kevin Smith, what am I to do with you? You clearly have no ambition. It's possible that, in the history of motion picture directors with successful careers, you are the laziest. Seven films and you still have no idea what to do with a camera. Amazingly, you make comedies without any sense of comic timing. The jokes drop into frame with all the rhythm and discrimination of birdshit. And the 80 minutes of deleted scenes on Zack and Miri, viewed all, could easily substitute for (and even improve upon) the utterly haphazard feature presentation. What gives? Blankfaced indifference to professionalism worked to your advantage exactly once, when it suited the material: Clerks, a great movie*, is our best chronicle of pre-adult wage labor ennui. But since then...for chrissakes are you even trying??
No, you are not. Because your lazy ass doesn't have to, because our nation's community colleges have supplied your Askewniverse with a sizable and devoted fan cult of equally undiscriminating and undereducated dorks.
And the infuriating part is that I'm certain you agree with everything I'm saying. You know you are a half-talented slug, and that you continue to sell DVDs only by some sickening miracle. Such admissions are given freely in the "Evening with Kevin Smith" documentary series, which follows your extensive speaking tours and reveals you to be, in person, a doggedly likeable and fairly masterful raconteur. These informal Q&As are without question the most entertaining work of your post-Clerks career.
The problem is that your jokes are only funny when you tell them. No one else has figured out how to deliver your material; at best your actors all seem to be doing the same impression of you. Woody Allen has the same problem. (In your case it might help to hire a full cast of trained professionals instead of the usual assortment of your doofus chums.) So either you are a writer of tragically difficult genius or else merely awful at directing performers. If the latter, I applaud Rogen and Banks for heroic efforts in the face of your flailing indolence. Either way there is no damn good reason for you to ever helm again. Your talents lie elsewhere, fat boy.
* Far superior to Office Space, a facile and hollow revenge fantasy.
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Most Kevin Smith movies feel like the realization of a fantasy of a group of stoned teenagers. It's like he took note of ever time someone quipped, "Hey, you know what would be hilarious, if they made a movie where ______". Then fill in the blank with some nonsense the originator won't remember the next morning.
ReplyDeleteWhat's amazing is that movie stars gather for these wank-fests like it's some exclusive rave to which they have to make a showing if they want hang with the other cool movie stars. Then they perform like it's their coffee break, and everybody goes to see it because, after all, isn't it cool that they made a movie where _____?
I'm glad there's a Kevin Smith, though, cause fuck it all. You know?
dont ever expect too much and you won't ever be let down. The morale of the story is stay away from clown mouth.
ReplyDeleteLet Us Fuck!
Not sure I agree with your put-down of Office Space. That movie rewards re-watching in a way few do. For myself, I both hate, love and sympathize with all the characters in that movie, despite some rather cardboard acting.
ReplyDeleteAs for Kevin Smith, you're right on the money. Ever since Randal tipped over the casket in Clerks, he hasn't really held my attention. Dogma is a particularly egregious example of his nonsensery. Clerks is, however, an amazingly good movie... I'll forgive him a lot of nonsense for that.
I have a long-standing practice of stirring up nonexistant rivalry between Clerks and Office Space.
ReplyDeleteIf allowing Elizabeth Banks to appear in a movie about pornography without making her take her clothes off isn't a crime, I dont' know what is.
ReplyDeleteExactly! If Smith is sooo open about sex, then it shouldn't be a big deal to show the fucking sex we came to see! Kevin Smith is insufferable in the way of a kid who talks dirty all the time but is secretly a virgin.
ReplyDelete