Chasing Amy is Kevin Smith’s third film and is known as an important milestone in ’90s queer cinema… as told by a straight white dude. And while it’s a good film, everyone these days seems to agree that it hasn’t aged well as a depiction of queer culture. Everyone, except, perhaps, young Sav Rogers the director of this documentary.

Sav Rogers did a TED talk explaining how Chasing Amy saved his life in high school and that led him to create this doc. And that’s interesting but it turns out this isn’t the critical analysis of Chasing Amy I was expecting. In fact, Rogers loves Chasing Amy so much and becomes too much of a friend of Kevin Smith for his film to be subjective enough in the first place.

Various lesbians are interviewed and they call the movie out on the one hand, but admit it’s a good film on the other. There isn’t a contrarian in the bunch that really expresses a strongly negative opinion of the film. And those people are probably out there and are what I thought this doc would examine.

Instead, a healthy chunk of this film is spent as an analysis of Sav Rogers’ life. I wasn’t expecting an autobiography but it turns out the complicated relationship he has with his girlfriend is in conversation with Chasing Amy. This is an interesting alternate examination of the original film but if that’s all the doc really had to say, it’d be a bit of a flub.

But what really saves the film is a remarkable interview with Joey Lauren Adams who played the girlfriend in Chasing Amy. It’s raw, honest, uncomfortable, and not at all what Rogers was expecting. It brings focus back on Chasing Amy and its previously known behind-the-scenes arcana. We’ve only gotten the story of Smith and Adams dating during production from his POV… now we get hers (plus other complexities… like working under Harvey Weinstein).

The interview derailed much of what Sav Rogers was expecting his documentary to be. Because maybe Chasing Chasing Amy isn’t the chase they chased Chasing Amy for, but is actually the chase they needed to chase Chasing Chasing Amy for all along.

Kevin Smith is interviewed as well since there isn’t a camera he wouldn’t talk to. And, to his credit, he’s self-aware of the movie and doesn’t hide behind his ego.

This isn’t the doc I expected, but it’s perhaps a more interesting doc that I got in the long run. And maybe the more interesting doc the director was aiming for. It’s not the exposé on Chasing Amy I’d been told it was, but it’s something else and that something is interesting.

Score: 82