Viking Night
Chasing Amy
By Bruce Hall
July 19, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I feel slightly less antagonism toward Mallrats; possibly because despite her lack of talent Shannen Doherty’s bitchy animal magnetism has always captivated me. That siren can sing me onto the rocks any time. No, the subject of this week’s column is definitely one of Kevin Smith’s best known films, but it’s the only one that didn’t leave me feeling intellectually violated afterward. It’s the only one that I’d ever bother to watch even five minutes of ever again. It gets to me. It speaks to me. I can relate to it. It’s even one of the few truly topical comedies I can tolerate. Give up? No, it’s not Dogma. It’s Chasing Amy.
For those of you who care, Chasing Amy is the third film in Smith’s ongoing New Jersey Chronicles. This would be a fictional canon the director created in an attempt to infuse his films with a "slice of life" from his boyhood roots. Each film takes place in or includes characters largely from New Jersey, they all cross reference each other and they all include the characters Jay and Silent Bob. It’s nice to see someone acknowledge where they came from and I assume this gave Smith an initial level of comfort with his own material. Beyond that there seems to be little reason for the gimmick and I’m not as in love with it as a lot of people are. In fact, all it does is make it impossible for me to forget about how much I hate Clerks as I’m trying to watch something else. So I’m forced to remind myself that I actually DO enjoy Chasing Amy to the point where Jay and Silent Bob don’t annoy me and Ben Affleck is actually a welcome sight...
...who appears here as Holden McNeil, a moderately successful comic book artist who works with his childhood friend Banky Edwards (Jason Lee). Holden and Banky seem to be in the midst of a creative and emotional rut when we first meet them, listlessly banging out autographs at a comic convention. They act like a couple of disaffected jerks as Holden openly condescends to their fans while Banky is busy swapping intolerable chunks of clunky dialogue with a convention troll. We discover that Holden is a dour, introverted curmudgeon with a tendency to feel sorry for himself. On the other hand Banky is a dour, extroverted curmudgeon with a tendency to feel sorry for everyone else. I kind of feel sorry for both of them, since they spend all of their free time slumming around in bars arguing about comic books. Their conversations are moderately amusing but still dull and contrived. But if you’re a Kevin Smith fan, this won’t bother you. You probably going to bust a gut and tell me that I need to be more open minded. Fine. Let’s open it up.
Like all of Smith’s films, Chasing Amy is front loaded with a lot of conversational gristle, mostly in the form of Showy Expositional Dialogue™. Characters launch into needless tirades on pointless subjects, mostly designed to kill five minutes of screen time, as well as illustrate how hip and edgy the director thinks he is. It usually sounds like uninspired filler to me, and when it isn’t relative to the plot it simply feels like a lazy copout. At least when Tarantino does it there’s often more meaning behind it and even when there isn’t at least you can count on someone eventually getting shot. In this case, we don’t even get ten minutes into the film without yet another inane rant about the social inequality of the Star Wars universe. Smith’s observations on Star Wars would be funny if they had any relevance, and if I hadn’t already heard them all back in ninth grade. But as I said, every character in a typical Kevin Smith movie IS Kevin Smith. They’re all so full of the same self referential snark and bluster so that it’s often hard to tell them apart.
A day or two later Holden is slumming at yet another bar, playing darts with a plucky artist named Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) whom he met through a mutual friend. They trade ham fisted witticisms on life and love while throwing darts into the camera for 90 seconds, and just like that - he’s in love with her. It’s a little hard to believe, and not just because of how fast it happens. Adams and Affleck have zero chemistry and what’s worse; Alyssa is afflicted with Adams’ slouchy comportment and shrill, birdlike voice. I don’t usually say things like “I wish Drew Barrymore was in this movie” but in this case, I really do. At any rate, Holden and Alyssa (surprise!) turn out to be from the same part of New Jersey and they both happen to sound exactly like Kevin Smith when they talk. Holden is convinced that its fate. I’m convinced the dialogue just sucks.
Meanwhile, Holden is so busy seeing unicorns and puppies that he almost fails to notice that Alyssa is gay. And she’s not just gay; she’s VERY gay, and she’s dating a girl who is so ridiculously hot, it’s like rubbing salt into Holden’s disbelieving eyes. The revelation is actually pretty amusing, and when I originally saw this movie in the theater I recall being incredibly bored up until this point. Now I found myself riveted to the screen, and not just because two attractive women were sucking each other’s tonsils out. It was because for the first time in memory, I was able to actually relate to someone in a Kevin Smith movie. They weren’t just an obnoxious manifestation of the director’s compulsiveness, they were real. And it was because I too had once been in love with a Lesbian.
I had met her the year before, and she was a Vampire Goth. These were far more than just people who liked to listen to Bauhaus and wear black all the time, like me. Vampire Goths practically invented cosplay - they made their own clothes and stood around looking like characters from an Anne Rice novel. They spoke in riddles and despite the oppressive heat coming off the dance floor, they sipped Merlot from ridiculous silver goblets - most likely imagining it was something else. My girl was beautiful, intelligent, witty and always in character. I was smitten. I was utterly besotted. It was bliss. It was torture. It was wonderful. It was horrible. And it was never, EVER going to happen. She was gay, I was not, and I tried everything in the book to get her home with me. It was a running joke we ran through each time I saw her, although she was the only one who found it funny.
So needless to say, I could feel Holden’s pain. And using this personal point of reference, I almost forgot that I was watching a Kevin Smith movie. I was able to ignore the artless dialogue and synthetic personalities and get absorbed into this flick the way I never could with Clerks. But it isn’t just me. The movie really does begin to change tone as Holden overcomes his initial disappointment and starts to honestly pursue a friendship with Alyssa. They have a lot in common and they bond in a very real way. They have frank, ardent discussions about sexuality that sound a bit naive today, and will sound downright vulgar if you’re not accustomed to sexually charged dialogue. But at the time, it wasn’t particularly common to see such an open and (surprisingly) earnest consideration of homosexuality on screen. Suddenly, Chasing Amy turns from a dimwitted, self conscious farce into an unexpectedly compelling romance.
But despite the occasionally weighty material, the movie remains accessible. This is still a romantic comedy and in a sense, it really isn’t so different from any other in that person A is in love with person B, but there is an obstacle keeping them apart. Halfway through the movie the obstacle is (seemingly) overcome, but with unpredictable consequences. Longing for something you can’t have is painful, but it isn’t nearly as complicated as making reality fit what you imagined. Some of the usual rom-com tropes are present here – there’s a sappy “falling in love” musical montage about forty minutes in and there’s even a Gay Best Friend, although this one is a rather refreshing spin on a very tired cliché. But it’s the third act of the film that really shines. None of the characters are ever fully formed but they grow on you, and you really do come to care what happens to them. Holden is a semi conservative Catholic boy who expects unrealistic things from romantic love. Alyssa is a free spirit who’s been places and done things Holden can’t even imagine. The two leads are obviously star crossed from the beginning and to its credit the film resists the urge to end on a treachly, predictable note. They way the story ends seems both inevitable and real.
Chasing Amy never completely stops being what it is, and of course that is a Kevin Smith movie. It is insecure, neurotic and desperately in need of your validation. It’s funny but not as funny as it thinks it is. It’s likeable and engaging, but only after an initial period of awkward fumbling. Like its creator, this movie is to some degree a nerd over exerting himself and largely becoming a bigger nerd in the process. But more than any of Smith’s films before it, this one has something to say, and more than any since, it succeeds. There’s a sincere earnestness to it that quickly outgrows its pedestrian roots and that clodhopping first act. This is the first Kevin Smith film that didn’t leave me skulking from the theater ashamed to be a member of the Slacker Generation. Unlike most rom-coms Chasing Amy ends with a poignant and realistic vibe. It’s not quite a warm embrace; it’s more like a well meaning pat on the back. So maybe it’s a bit of a stretch to call out every Kevin Smith character as Kevin Smith. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that Chasing Amy is an open window into the soul of its creator and for one brief shining moment in the spring of 1997, it was a great view.