Kevin Smith returns to his roots (again) for teen-centric The 4:30 Movie

Once an indie underdog, Kevin Smith has, in middle age, devoted himself to making what critics and fans alike might characterize as glorified, self-referential home movies, cast with friends and family members and filled with callbacks, in-jokes, and the same familiar anxieties about friendship, romance, and growing up. This is not an original observation. But given how frequently and consistently Smith recycles his material, it seems unlikely that anyone will come up with a fresher take any time soon. Certainly Smith isn’t interested in one. His movies have, to their credit, remained personal, earnest, and unpretentious (all positives), which explains at least part of their continued appeal to his faithful and forgiving fan base. But they have also become, more often than not, stale, lazy, and patience-testing, which is what irks his critics (many of whom, one suspects, harbor a formative fondness for Smith’s early output).

That having been said, Smith’s latest, the corny ‘80s-set coming-of-age comedy The 4:30 Movie, while not a good film per se, is probably the best work he’s produced in many years. (At the very least, it’s a lot less leaden than the low-bar likes of  Clerks III, Jay And Silent Bob Reboot, or Yoga Hosers.) Austin Zajur plays movie-obsessed teen and obvious Smith stand-in Brian, who, in the opening scene, asks Melody (Siena Agudong), the dream girl whose boob he almost touched in a pool the previous summer, to go on a quasi-date to the local movie theater. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and his plan is to spend the early part of the day theater-hopping with his two best friends, rat-tailed Belly (Reed Northrup) and macho Burny (Nicholas Cirillo), before meeting up with Melody at a 4:30 showing of something called Bucklick, all while avoiding the theater manager (Ken Jeong), who struts around in a Miami Vice suit and drives a “movie-mobile” festooned with clangy old film reels.

In the comic-book terms Smith has long favored, this might be called an origin story: Brian is not only a Smith-esque pop-culture nerd, but a budding writer who narrates his day-to-day activities and thoughts into a tape recorder. (In the hands of a more skillful filmmaker, this on-screen narration might make for a clever bit of storytelling, but Smith forgets about it for most of The 4:30 Movie.) Everything is cast in a glow of hazy, diffusion-filter-smeared nostalgia, though it never feels authentic to a particular time or place, or even develops a consistent vibe. Instead, what we get is an unremitting stream of references to the stuff of Smith’s Generation X teenhood: Starlog, Highlander, Star Wars, SCTV, pro wrestlers, Billy Idol, Yakov Smirnoff, nuclear war, Hands Across America, and so on. 

Which is to say that it’s a lot like Smith’s other banter-y films. The main difference being is that the characters are actual dorky, horny ‘80s teens who spend their downtime talking about Jaws rather than adults who have stubbornly held on to their teenage tastes and hang-ups about friends, girls, and sex. This apparent self-reflexivity should not be mistaken for self-examination: all the conflicts here are external, coming by way of annoying adults, insecure friends, and overbearing parents. (In a wearying running gag, Rachel Dratch plays Brian’s mom, who keeps calling him at the movie theater.) All that Brian needs is confidence and an audience, both of which come by way of Melody. 

There are flashes of vintage Smithiana—mostly in Brian’s brief encounters with bit weirdos and randos who’ve found Jesus or insist that the biopic Gandhi “never happened”—but they prove to be few and far between.  The decision to set a large part of The 4:30 Movie in a neighborhood multiplex (actually a real movie theater that Smith owns in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey) does no favor to his lackluster sense of staging, though it does give him plenty of opportunities to indulge in the cameos and crude, zany parodies that are one of his trademarks. We are treated to lengthy fake trailers for a sleazy exploitation flick about a streetwalking killer nun (which is actually funny) and a horror movie about ass-eating monsters (which isn’t), and extended clips from a Flash–Gordon-meets-Beastmaster cheesefest called Astro Blaster And The Beavermen. 

Like the masturbation jokes and the Batman references, these are familiar ingredients in the slapdash Smith formula. The familiarity is, of course, the point: Anyone going to a new Kevin Smith movie in 2024 is either already well-versed in the comfort food of the View Askewniverse, or is being dragged on a date by someone who is. The result evokes a kind of bittersweet nostalgia—not for the much-mythologized pop-cultural ‘80s, but for a younger, fresher writer-director who was able to do a lot more with a lot less.

Director: Kevin Smith 
Writer: Kevin Smith 
Stars: Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo, Reed Northrup, Siena Agudong, Ken Jeong
Release Date: September 13, 2024