The writer-director Kevin Smith looks back fondly on his New Jersey childhood in this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy.
“The 4:30 Movie,” a nostalgic period comedy about teenage cinephiles coming of age in small-town New Jersey, is alternately juvenile and sentimental. It’s an awkward tonal balance familiar from the writer-director Kevin Smith’s early features, including “Mallrats” and the ’90s cult classic “Clerks.”
But with its soft lighting and almost obsessive fondness for its mid-80s production design, this is clearly Smith working in a different register — more sincere and personal, as befits what he’s described as his “secret origin story.”
The jokes range from old-school, foul-mouthed patter (lots of stuff about “second base” and various euphemisms for masturbation) to throwback cultural signifiers (including “The Brady Bunch,” Van Halen and Hands Across America), delivered by Austin Zajur, Reed Northrup and Nicholas Cirillo with capable if largely unamusing adolescent brio.
You can tell Smith has put more effort into this movie than both his trite studio cash-ins (“Cop Out”) and his dashed-off experiments (“Yoga Hosers”), trying earnestly to account for how he fell in love with cinema and became a filmmaker. It’s like “The Fabelmans” if Steven Spielberg had grown up to make bad movies.
The script is loaded with droll, audience-flattering nods to the future, where characters confidently insist things that viewers know make them sound stupid, like “no one will ever pay to see a Batman movie” or “the Mets will never win the World Series.” This is the cheapest type of joke you can make in a period comedy, and “The 4:30 Movie” makes it constantly. Effort goes only so far, and “The 4:30 Movie” doesn’t surpass Smith’s usual limitations.
The 4:30 Movie
Rated R for strong language, mild violence, some sexuality and lewd humor. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
