‘The 4:30 Movie’ Review: Kevin Smith Delivers His Best Film in Years by Writing About Teenagers Instead of Grown Men Who Act Like Them

Thirty years ago, Kevin Smith burst into the world of independent filmmaking in a blaze of glorious serendipity that nobody could replicate if they tried. Self-financed for less than $30,000 and shot entirely in the convenience store where he worked, the original “Clerks” was an electrifying mix of slacker wit and utter absurdism at a time when putting pop culture-obsessed male mediocrity on the big screen felt like a genuinely novel concept . Even after double digit viewings, the film still feels like a pitch-perfect punk rock farce that can make even the most discerning cinephile laugh out loud more than it has any right to.

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None of Smith’s subsequent work caught that kind of lightning in a bottle, but quite a few of his early films were close enough to the original high to be watchable. “Mallrats” is a passable ’90s comedy, “Chasing Amy” is a clever character study anchored by a great Ben Affleck performance, and “Clerks 2” was a solid sequel. But for much of the 21st century, the pickings have been slim for Kevin Smith fans hoping for a renaissance. His body horror experiment “Tusk” was a great midnight movie , but it spawned the truly abysmal Nazi-sausage-centric spin-off “Yoga Hosers.” And while “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” was tolerable as fan service, “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” was unwatchable drivel. Even the long-awaited “Clerks 3” amounted to little more than a trip down memory lane.

All of which is to say that nobody would blame you for tuning out Smith’s directorial output years ago. His brand as a cultural figure remains strong thanks to an empire of podcasts and comic books that left him perfectly positioned to ride the wave of 21st century geek culture, but his movies have increasingly felt like self-contained efforts that existed only for his diehard fans.

“The 4:30 Movie” could have easily been more of the same. It was filmed almost entirely at SModcastle Cinema, Smith’s childhood movie theater that he purchased and re-branded in 2022 — and the lack of external constraints could have permitted him to run wild with his worst impulses. But Smith has always done his best work when he’s forced to come up with an idea based purely on having access to a cool location, so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that his coming-of-age comedy is easily his best work since “Tusk” — and possibly even since “Clerks 2.”

The term “love letter to cinema” has been beaten into a pulp in recent years, and it feels pointlessly reductive to put “The 4:30 Movie” in the same category as “The Fabelmans.” (As a fan of Smith’s who thoroughly enjoyed his latest work, even I can be honest enough to say that the gap in quality between the two films is pretty much equivalent to the same gap between his career and Steven Spielberg’s.) But more than anything, “The 4:30 Movie” is a love letter to Going to The Movies. Not going to a movie, but the actual act of passing hours at a theater without much regard for the actual quality of what you were watching.

Brian David (Austin Zajur) wants nothing more than to spend one of the last days of summer with his crush Melody Barnegat (Siena Agudong). But the young Casanova’s seduction skills have not yet progressed past the “ignore a girl for three months after getting to second base at a pool party” stage. She’s a little surprised when he calls her at work and asks her to meet him at the 4:30 movie, but she agrees to try her best to be there after work. With romance in the air, this awkward teen suddenly has more than just “Return of the Jedi” to occupy his mind.

Brian has no intention of going into a date without backup, so he enlists his two best friends Belly (Reed Northup) and Burnie (Nicholas Cirillo) to spend the day at the local theater with him. Their plan is to buy tickets to one film before spending the day hopping between movies without leaving the building. But their plans for slacker nirvana attract the ire of Manager Mike (Ken Jeong, in a tyrannically delusional performance that steals the entire movie), who becomes determined to find the boys who aren’t supposed to be there today and kick them out for good. What would be an inconvenience on any other day becomes a catastrophic problem for Brian, who feels like his entire world will implode if he isn’t able to stay in the theater long enough to meet Melody. As he navigates the chaos of his idiot friends, his embarrassing parents, a manager who hates him, and his date’s overbearing mother, he learns a few things about himself in the process.

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For a filmmaker who’s known for trading on vulgarity, Smith’s writing style translates shockingly well to children. That’s probably because, other than the lack of semen jokes, these kids are quite similar to all of Smith’s other protagonists. They’re unemployed, obsessed with “Star Wars,” clueless about women, and incapable of expressing feelings without wrapping them up in pop culture references. But it’s nice to see his characters behave in a developmentally appropriate way for a change. Rather than sad looks into grown men who stubbornly refuse to grow up, Smith is able to give us a cute portrait of kids who just haven’t gotten there yet.

For once, everyone in a Kevin Smith movie is behaving in an age-appropriate fashion — including the filmmaker himself. “Clerks” was the kind of movie that could only be made by someone in their 20s. It radiates the oversimplified worldviews, smarmy humor, and misdirected anger that fuels so many young underachievers who think they deserve more than what the universe has given them. That’s why the film still feels so honest 30 years after it debuted, but it’s not hard to see why Smith’s subsequent attempts to recapture that energy as a happily married family man living his wildest dreams have fallen flat. “The 4:30 Movie,” on the other hand, feels like something that only a 54-year-old could have made. Yes, it’s sentimental and nostalgic (often too much for its own good), but it boasts the steady hand of a storyteller who has figured out the difference between moments that are actually life-changing and the youthful drama that’s destined to be forgotten in a month.

There’s a lovely irony to the fact that after years of re-hashing “Clerks” and filling the View Askewniverse with its many side characters, Smith seems to have inadvertently re-captured some of its magic by abandoning that world altogether. “The 4:30 Movie” owes far more to John Hughes than the Richard Linklater movies that inspired Smith to make “Clerks,” but it contains its own versions of many of the elements that made that film great.

Both movies take place in a single location that Smith conveniently had access to, and both show a lifetime’s worth of excitement unfolding in one day. They both extract plenty of humor from the neuroses of those on both sides of the customer service industry and the ways that the silly tasks of a small business can seem monumentally important if your entire life revolves around them. But most of all, both films show us that Kevin Smith can make a damn good movie when he gets out of his own way. This one was worth the wait, even if we had to sit through “Yoga Hosers” to get here.

Grade: B+

A Saban Films release, “The 4:30 Movie” opens in theaters on Friday, September 13.

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