The 4:30 Movie

4 outta 5

The 4:30 Movie by writer/director Kevin Smith is him cobbling together well worn thematic bits from his previous films but in an entertaining way. This is pretty much Smith’s third film adapting his rise from QuickStop convenience store to filmmaker after Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Clerks III so it’s pretty well-worn ground by now. And as with almost all of Smith’s output, it bounces between earnest and crude, although this one probably lays the earnest on thicker than usual. It is a little odd that the funniest, most memorable bit in the film is a fake trailer for a nun hooker revenge thriller Sister Sugar Walls that clashes badly with what the movie is tonally about, but it is a really hilarious gag.

Brian (Austin Zajur) is a teenager who calls up his old crush, Melody (Siena Agudong), out of the blue and asks her out on a movie date to the local theatre. She says she can meet him later at the 4:30 showing of an R-rated movie. He grabs his friends, the weird Belly (Reed Northrup) and the ladies man Burny (Nicholas Cirillo) and they go to the local theatre, run by the snarky Manager Mike (Ken Jeong). But as they cause a ruckus as they bounce from screen to screen and try to sneak into R-rated movies, they all get eventually banned by Manager Mike. Now Brian and Burny are at odds about their friendship and Melody, and Manager Mike is keeping his eyes peeled for the three youths and kick them out for good.

There is a lot of teenage drama, where interpersonal relationships are the most important thing that anyone could ever conceive but does also come off as kinda whiny. There is a moment when there are fists thrown between Burny and Brian that is supposed to be incredibly dramatic, but this was done better in Smith’s previous films like Chasing Amy and Clerks. Also, in 4:30, a character gets a pep talk when unexpectedly bumping into a celebrity they idolize. Here it is Burny with a famous wrestler, played with flair by Sam Richardson. His character, Major Murder, bounces between his wrestling personality and sage advice. It is a good scene, although Smith has done the same thing with Brody meeting Stan Lee in Mallrats and Ollie meeting Will Smith in Jersey Girl. There is even a moment when young Brian, who is a pretty clear stand-in for Smith, gets an inspirational speech from someone who tells him he was always a filmmaker. This is from a story that Smith has told about his inspiration to make Clerks. The final shot of 4:30 even pulls from an iconic Smith locale. Now if one doesn’t know the ins and outs of Kevin Smith’s entire history this will breeze on by, but for any viewer familiar with his previous output, it is noticeable.

The comedy comes with a lot of quipping dialogue with a motormouthed style, and there are some funny asides in here. Like when the boys are standing outside of the theatre and they keep mentioning that with Poltergeist 2 coming out how much they liked “Poltergeist 1”, and Brian mentions that the first film was only called Poltergeist, and even with a sequel coming out it doesn’t automatically change the name, as he gets progressively more frustrated. And there is a funny scene when Brian keeps getting pulled out of the movie to field “emergency calls” from his mother (Rachel Dratch) that clearly isn’t an emergency, but it allows for some brief cameos by Jason Lee as his dad. And when Brian returns to the theatre, he finds Burny engaged in a very crude situation.

But probably the funniest bits in the film are the fake trailers and the fake movie they are watching. The aforementioned Sister Sugar Walls is funny as hell and has a brief but hilarious cameo by frequent Smith sidekick Jason Mewes and his few line deliveries are awesome. There is also a trailer for a guy at a construction site, played by Jason Biggs, who ends up in a very messy situation involving monsters in a port-a-potty. The movie they are watching is a Flash Gordon style sci-fi epic, Astro Blaster & The Beaver Men, with all the cardboard and foam sets and Diedrich Bader and Logic playing the main characters, it’s incredibly corny and a lot of fun.

When the movie slows down way down to get into the burgeoning relationship between Brian and Melody that is so darn earnest that it feels like a bit of a slog. Zajur and Agudong certainly do earnest well but it is not very engaging. As for the other 2 boys, Cirillo has some funny moments as he brags about his prowess with women and Northrup as Belly has some fun random interjections. Jeong as the Manager plays a petty, nasty guy that he is very good at, and he gets his comeuppance with some major damage inflicted on his prized car.

As far as Kevin Smith’s films go, The 4:30 Movie seems a bit more on realistic empathy like in Chasing Amy but also with some random weirdness from the Jay and Silent Bob films. Sometimes the tonal clash is extreme, but this shows how movies can be fun communal experiences, even if relationship drama can get in the way.