Mallrats is Kevin Smith’s second film. It also was his first “big-budget studio film” and, so far, his last. Mallrats’ budget came in at around $30 million. In Hollywood, $30 million is considered low-budget, but it’s relatively high for a comedy—especially a comedy with no grade-A talent involved. I think most of the budget was blown on the different sets used in the movie. Mallrats deals with two characters, much like Clerks. This time, however, Jason Lee plays the slacker and the other character really isn’t a slacker, he’s a whiner. Mallrats has some romantic interests in the movie, although Kevin Smith really doesn’t take the romantic stuff seriously as he does in Chasing Amy. Mallrats is universally considered one of the worst movies ever made, although I disagree. It’s not as funny as the other Kevin Smith movies as a whole, but some individual scenes work. While there are a lot of better comedies out there, Mallrats is still worth seeing for Jason Lee’s performance as the slacker character. Even though this is Jason Lee’s first movie, he does a really good job with the character—even if he has been doing similar roles in movies ever since.

I give Mallrats **1/2 out of ****.

I'd first like to start off my review by saying that Mat is an idiot. Now with that out of the way, lets talk about Mallrats. This may be my favorite Kevin Smith movie. After the success of Clerks, he now had a budget, but there was a catch. He was given the money to make yet another "day in the life of" movie, instead of making Dogma, which he had originally intented to make immediately after Clerks. Most of Mallrats is just comedy strung together with a some what loose plot. This movie was also the first one that Jay and Silent Bob played a somewhat large part in. I'm not sure who is included in this so-called "Universe" that considers this to be Kevin Smith's worst movie, I just know that Mat is the only one I know who might be include in said "Universe". Maybe that's just because there's a lot comic book reference humor, and the extent of Mat's knowledge of comics consists of last week's Cathy comic strip. Or maybe it's because Mat has no idea what he's talking about at any given time.

Mallrats is great, because it's the only Kevin Smith movie where he didn't really have a story to tell. He was payed to make it. Hence, he didn't care as about the storyline, and just made a movie that's still funny as hell. It also features a cameo from Stan Lee. The god of all that is comic books!

I give it ****out of****