I missed The 4:30 Movie in theaters… it was playing in one theater but I wasn’t aware it was Kevin Smith’s latest. Only found out the day after it closed and have been waiting for a reasonable rental price ever since. Ironically, I’d have known it was his film if I’d been listening to his podcast but I dropped it last year… but his podcast is why a lot of the flick feels so familiar.

The flick is set in the ’80s and follows a high school kid who asks his crush out on a date… to the 4:30 movie. Of course, he can’t leave his boys behind so they go to a matinee and have to figure out how to get into R rated movies while not getting banned for life.

The flick feels auto-biographical to Smith… which is true of a number of his other films. I only know this because of how he talks on his podcast. And knowing that he bought his hometown movie theater and suddenly he’s shooting in a movie theater… yeah, that checks out. None of this is a crime, but it is distracting.

In that it’s auto-biographical also makes it feel derivative of Clerks and Chasing Amy as far as how it handles male friend groups. Almost to a fault… I thought they were just going to repeat story beats but they did not (apparently there are multiple ways to talk about male friendships… who knew?). Unfortunately, the film is so short and stuffed that its earnest buddy drama doesn’t feel as earned as it does in his other films. It takes too many short-cuts to get where the other flicks got naturally..

The romantic comedy angle is cute, for the most part. I like that Smith cast a non-traditional male lead and the girl is cute as hell. I wanted more of her but after her opening scene, she vanishes for about an hour of a very short film. Their chemistry is good and it made me wish we spent more time with them.

The biggest flaw is that the film feels rushed and unfocused. It wants to be this cute rom-com, it wants to be a comedy about friendship, it wants to be nostalgia bait, it wants to show off some amusingly low budget fake trailers. It wants to be about the hijinks of sneaking into R rated films. It wants to be so many things that it feels like it climaxes multiple times. Like we reach a logical finale but realize we haven’t even gotten back to the romance yet.

While its a little unstructured, it’s still cute, charming, and funny. I enjoyed it and it has a different feel compared to most of Kevin Smith’s raunchier films. A lower budget, back to basics style. It’s fun.

Score: 78