Mallrats

Directed by Kevin Smith, Mallrats follows Jason Lee’s Brodie Bruce and Jeremy London’s T.S. Quint as they attempt to get over recent breakups by spending the day at a local shopping center. Filmmaker Kevin Smith, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a rough-around-the-edges and fairly low-rent comedy that benefits substantially from its affable, easygoing sensibilities and raft of appealing performances, as, in terms of the latter, the charismatic efforts of the various periphery players, including Claire Forlani, Michael Rooker, and Ben Affleck, goes a long way towards smoothing over the hit-and-miss narrative’s bumps and lulls – although it’s clear, ultimately, that Lee’s commanding and thoroughly engaging turn as the often impressively unlikable protagonist remains a continuing highlight. And although Smith’s less-than-refined approach results in an ongoing lack of forward momentum, particularly as certain jokes fall flat and he emphasizes a few far-from-engrossing subplots and digressions (eg Brodie and T.S. visit Priscilla Barnes’ topless fortune teller), Mallrats‘ lighthearted atmosphere and preponderance of agreeable elements ensures that such deficiencies are, generally speaking, easy enough to overlook – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as a decent-enough entry within Smith’s decidedly erratic body of work.

**1/2 out of ****