Except for the constant presence of supporting players who have all worked with writer/director Kevin Smith in some capacity in the last 30 years, the filmmaker’s latest work, The 4:30 Movie, might accidentally be mistaken for a movie by someone other than Kevin Smith. In a film not about clerks or stoners who hang out outside of a convenience store, this film is a semi-autobiographical story about Smith’s teenage years as a movie lover who has finally gotten around to discovering girls. Set in the summer of 1986, the story centers around Brian David (Smith stand-in Austin Zajur) and his two buddies, the social misfit Belly (Reed Northrup) and the cooler kid Burny (Nicholas Cirillo), who have a plan one afternoon to catch a screening of a popular movie they’ve seen many times before so they can then sneak into a later show of an R-rated film. Classic ’80s teenager behavior, take it from me.
But Brian David has thrown a wrench into the works by inviting Melody (Siena Agudong) to the film along with his friends, something that doesn’t sit well with Burny, who doesn’t understand Brian David’s willingness to throw a girl into the mix. But Brian David has had a crush on this girl since the previous summer, when they made out and he was given the chance to go to second base (he chickened out and has regretted it ever since). If the date goes well, he’s going to attempt to make their relationship something more official by giving it the boyfriend/girlfriend monicker. Melody can’t meet them until the later show, so the boys end up spending the day at the theater, while trying to avoid its asshole head honcho, Manager Mike (Ken Jeong), who lives to ban people from his mini-multiplex.
The 4:30 Movie is effectively a day-in-the-life movie combined with a coming-of-age film, and I have to admit, being able to identify with a great deal of what happens in this movie and the conversations within, I found it to have more inherent, organic charm than most Smith films. He still goes for the easy, crude joke every chance he gets, but it makes more sense when teenagers are saying them because they are inherently immature. There are armloads of supporting players and cameos by Smith regulars and a few new to his View Askewniverse. Keep an eye out for Kate Micucci as Melody’s overbearing mom, Jason Lee and Rachel Dratch as Brian David’s parents, Sam Richardson as a pro wrestler that the boys idolize, Method Man, Rosario Dawson, Justin Long, Adam Pally, Clerks star Jeff Anderson, and Jay himself, Jason Mewes, as well as Smith’s wife and daughter, which should come as no surprise.
The film feels like it started out as something much longer but was chopped down quite a bit to make it shorter and more easily digestible, but the truth is, I could have spent more time with these kids, preferably out of the company of these hammy adult actors working in the periphery. The scenes with Brian David and Melody together and alone are easily the best moments in The 4:30 Movie, and I wish there had been more of them and less Ken Jeong. Smith creates some fake grindhouse trailers that play at the theater, and those are kind of fun as parody but also capturing the aesthetic of those types of movies. Also, I really want to call out composer Bear McCreary’s synth-heavy score here as being outstanding and period-accurate.
Smith captures the fun and perils of young adulthood convincingly, but I wish he had spent more time exploring the complicated nature of these male friendships, which will inevitably be altered when love rears its ugly head. Still, what’s here is pretty satisfying, and if for no other reason than I’d like to encourage Smith to do more films like this, I’m going to borderline recommend seeking out The 4:30 Movie and possibly sneaking into it.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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