Kevin Smith has always been a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. He sees life in his unique, quirky manner and then translates that oddball view to celluloid. Well, maybe not celluloid, but to a digital format.
In his new film, The 4:30 Movie, streamable on several sites, Smith brings his audience back to a town somewhat like the one in which he grew up in New Jersey . It’s summertime, May 25, 1986. School is out.
Brian David ,a newly-minted high school senior, has had a serious crush on Melody Barnegat for months. Melody, played by Siena Agudong, is sweet, nice, cute, and clever. Brian David, played by Austin Zajur, is, above all, sincere. While he isn’t looked upon by those around him as good looking, He is referred to as short, but I find him quite attractive, especially because he has dark probing eyes, an expressive face, and adorable dimples. Brian David gets up his nerve and asks Melody out on an afternoon movie date.
It is at the local multiplex that the real action kicks off. It is obvious to anyone who has seen Kevin Smith’s films or watched him being interviewed on a talk show, that Smith is movie crazy. He lives for certain pop culture films and makes many references to movie dialog and movie creators. In The 4:30 Movie, he brings to life the movie-going experience of his teen years In a free-spirited way, this film makes a suitable double bill with Empire of Light from 2022.
In the hours before Melody can join Brian David, the action inside the multiplex is frenetic as Brian David and his mates—two other seventeen-year-old guys, try to sneak into R-rated movies. The lobby becomes a battle ground where the teens encounter small children who assault them, get them into trouble. Inside the theaters, there is more going on than watching the screen and eating the bacon treats one mom has provided. It’s a darkened place where sex is a possible adventure.
The theater boss, Manager Mike, Ken Jeong, is a comical bully who drives a ridiculous “movie mobile” and rules the roost by berating his employees and banning youngsters from the premises. In a job that probably pays little more than the gal who sells popcorn, Manager Mike hollers with pride, “I’m in the movie business. I talk to studios.”
Kevin Smith really sees into the movie-going experience of that era. He is some form of Brian David. People around Brian David constantly are impressed by his knowledge of movies and TV. One character in particular, a gal who works in the multiplex, also knows film. She quotes movie dialog, knows artful directors such as Martha Coolidge and Alan Parker, and wants to be a director someday. Her conversation with Brian David is a key to the significance of this film:
She says, “Most people go to movies to escape their lives, but we go because movies make sense of life…. They tell a lie that tells the truth.”
The 4:30 Movie has much of the look and feel of a classic Kevin Smith film… Clerks and the follow-ups, any film with Jay and Silent Bob. They look as though they were made for small amounts of money but they stand out as auteurist. No other filmmaker can really match the unique style that Smith has had since his beginnings.
Smith is a devotee of the pop culture in which he grew up, and he also is a skilled artist and interpreter of that culture.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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