I really thought the SDMB would be MUCH more into the Kevin Smith films than you apparently are.
Everybody that is bashing the movies are doing it for the same reasons a lot of people find them great. The kinds of people that like Jay are not people that notice that the camera hasn’t moved in 10 minutes. This isn’t Citizen Kane here.
Then I must be the only person to like all 5. I got the Kevin Smith Q&A DVD and 15 of the comic books (Green Arrow, Daredevil and another one that I can’t think of right now) written by Smith for Christmas. I don’t even read comic books. These are the first in my life.
[sub]I’ve been meaning to post a question about them actually.[/sub]
I have all the movies on DVD or VHS. I am a Kevin Smith fan and I am alone in the world (or at least a minority as far as the SDMB is concerned).
He’d be the first to agree with you on these points. He considers himself a writer first and foremost and he directs just to get his words to the screen.
Not every geek loves him. I’m pretty geeky, I get the references, I’ve been to conventions, and I still can’t stand him. What’s funny is going to comic book conventions these days and looking at all the guys who so desperately want to be him. If big guys in stupid trenchcoats, clockly boots, long hair, and ball caps turn you on, hie thee to a comic convention and take your pick of thousands.
Smith is one of the most interesting screenwriters working today. The fact that he’s not a flashy director is irrelevant. Lots of directors make slick films that are total crap.
Clerks was a revelation, the perfect expression of someone working in a dead end job. It was also hilarious. Smith got away with a new type of bluntly sexual jokes (“South Park” later expanded on this type of humor) and he did it well. He’s the first filmmaker since Preston Sturges to understand what “bawdy” really meant.
I haven’t seen Mallrats of Jay and Silent Bob yet (I love Smith; my wife hates him, so I don’t get much chance to see him), but Chasing Amy was also a brilliant film. The scene where Alyssa breaks down after Holden confronts her with her sexual past is one of the most heartbreaking in cinema.
Dogma was OK. I think the message got in the way of the humor, but Smith gets credit for trying.
I think the man is brilliant. He is, dare I say, a “cult classic”. Clerks is enjoyable for being NOT HOLLYWOOD, and for the simplicity, and bizarreness, of it all. Mallrats is hilarious. Bob = Batman. I love it! Chasing Amy is a humourous and interesting look at human sexuality, blah blah. Again, I love it. Dogma is brilliant. That’s all I can say…just brilliant. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is absolutely hilarious! BUT…only if you are familiar with the other films, with the characters, and also with the history of Kevin Smith’s relationships with Matt and Ben. It’s kind of like a big inside joke.
I am thouroughly looking forward to Jersey Girl.
It’s all about the dialogue. And the fact that he loves his fans. I saw him do a Q & A in college and it was excellent and funny and I’ll be a fan forever. And I really like Jason Lee (I even saw Mumford), so having him in the Kevin Smith movies definitely improves them.
Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back was pretty weak though. Funny parts, but didn’t hold together as a coherent movie. Also, most of the Clerks cartoon wasn’t really that funny. Parts of it were hysterical, but most of it fell flat. So he’s not a God.
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back was a huge joke. Holden’s speech about how Silent Bob is just a poor bastard that has to suffer Jay was completely a play on Kevin Smith’s feelings about finishing up the storyline and moving on. If you pay close attention, Kevin looks directly at the camera with a look of “EXACTLY!” I can’t wait to see Jersey Girl, regardless of the fact that it has Jennifer Lopez in it.
I love all of the Kevin Smith films. Clerks is the reason that my boyfriend and I started talking. I guess I can associate with the movies because they pinpoint certain times in my life when I was exactly like one or more of the characters. These movies were never meant to be great cinematic masterpieces of our time; they were meant to be entertainment.
For the people complaining about his lack of inovation in cinematography, that stems from an early reveiw of Clerks that declared that his cinema style was that he had no style. KS took that and ran with it. Of course, doing so smacks of a Pee Wee Hermanish “I meant to do that,” but it works for him.
Same here, dead0man! I thought there’d be more fans here because of the proportion of geekdom. Maybe Smith is wearing out his welcome among the geeks.
Something about this thread makes strikes me the wrong way. Is it suddenly fashionable among the geek crowd to hate Kevin Smith the same way it is to now hate “Star Wars”?
That being said, I don’t hate him, haven’t seen anything after Dogma, saw the movies in the wrong order, and still think they’re pretty funny. I just recognize that the guy’s no Coppola or Spielberg.
I like all his movies, but thought Dogma was pretty weak. I felt KS was out of his league, and he was casting his inner circle of friends in roles they weren’t capable of pulling off. Damon and Aflac are too much the 1990’s disaffected slacker types to pull off playing archangels. You gotta admit though, Buddy Christ is an image that will stay lodged in your pssyche forever.
I would like to see Kevin Smith dialogue directed by somebody else, but such a project would probably entail so many rewrites and revisions, maybe about 2 words of the original script would remain intact.
While I’ve come late to the whole Kevin Smith thing, I’ve seen Clerks and Chasing Amy, both of which I loved, and Dogma, which was a mixed blessing.
IMHO, Dogma suffered from Hollywood’s “turn everything into an action flick” fetish. (E.g. Fellowship of the Ring.) Clearly, KS was given some real money to make this one, but it came with strings attached.
I love the Kevin Smith movies for a lot of reasons. The characters are like the people in my own life, their idiosyncrasies magnified for humorous effect until it’s more funny than annoying. The conversations they have are the ones my friends and I would have in that same situation.
These movies are, in a nutshell, lowbrow movies made for intellectuals. Dick and fart jokes for folks who don’t normally enjoy dick and fart jokes. American Pie for the brainy set. I love watching a movie that panders to my occasional desire for crudeness without insulting my intelligence like typical teen movies do.
Besides, there’s a certain earnestness that pervades these movies (except for Jay&Silent Bob, which was straight-up spoof of his own work, as well as some of his favorite movies). A feeling of realness, of being something deeply important on a personal level being put out there in the form of a joke. The movies aren’t slick and stylish, but neither is the man who makes them, and that’s what makes them work.
I’m gonna throw my hat into the ring, and state that I love Kevin Smith movies. I laughed hard and long at Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I make salsa sharks when I eat chips. I shout out, “DO IT DOUG!” when trying to motivate a friend to achieve something. I even laugh whenever I hear Come On Eileen.
In order my favorites are:
Clerks/Chasing Amy/Jay and Silent Bob/Mallrats/Dogma.
(I liked Dogma, but there was something not quite right about it.)
Why do I like them? They’re entertaining. They are not trying to be something that they are not. That is to say, KS doesn’t try to be making the next great american film. So much as he is just trying to make a movie that entertains.
His characters ring very true to me. From Dante to Bethany, they all seem very real. So even though his films are generally comedy, the drama doesn’t feel fake or contrived.
Plus, he is funny. Which I know is somewhat taste driven. But, I find him funny, and his stuff is usually written well.
I am really looking forward to Jersey Girl. He hired a new cinematographer to help him with the camera work… I forget his name, but a lot of movie people are geeking out over it.
I really like Kevin Smith’s movies. The reason that I like them so much is that I think that he puts a lot of himself into them. He’s really nice to his fans, leads a fairly normal life, and most of all, even though a lot of people know who he is, he isn’t pretentious and he doesn’t try to be any more than himself. I think that it’s part of that bleeding into his work that I like so much.
Smith sums of Jay and Silent Bob pretty nicely on the DVD. He talks about how during the promotion of the film, they said over and over that the movie stands on its own and it’s a good comedy. On the commentary he says something to the effect of “Well, now I can tell you that’s bullshit. You need to have seen several dozen other movies to enjoy this flick at all.”
He definitely has little middle ground–people seem to either love his stuff or really hate it.
I’m kinda afraid of Jersey Girl. I didn’t want another Jay and Bob movie, but I’m not sure I’ll like this one at all.
I’m not sure how I feel about his movies… they’re cool, I guess, but I never got into the cult surronding them. Dogma was neat, but I’m generally a fan of modern religious comedy (go read Good Omens. now). I read QUIVER, his Green Arrow comic… some cool bits, but what he did with Stanley and his Monster sickened me, and all the shots of young girls in danger of being raped was a bit, um, iffy…
The ones I’ve seen (Clerks, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Mallrats, and Dogma) were intermitantly funny or interesting, but mostly boring and, IMHO, pointless.
Most of the humor wasn’t that funny. I don’t have anything against dick and fart jokes in general, but the jokes in the movies just didn’t do it for me. Most of the characters weren’t that interesting to me. Maybe I’d enjoy it more if I knew more stoners or was a stoner myself. Or maybe if I was into comic books, I dunno. Jay and Silent Bob in particular were more annoying than interesting.
This is not to say that I don’t like Kevin Smith. I think he has a lot of talent. It’s just that he uses that talent to make movies that just aren’t my thing.
