Movie of the Week: Chasing Amy

Alexa:  Kevin Smith routinely balances offbeat premises with clever (if sometimes crass) dialogue. And while I’ve enjoyed many of his movies, Chasing Amy is a cut above the rest – for the most part. Ben Affleck, Jason Lee and particularly Joey Lauren Adams deliver compelling performances, and the film’s take on love and friendship feels more honest and heartfelt than some of Smith’s other works without being too overwrought. It’s apparent that this was a passion project for Smith, deftly balancing genuine emotion with his signature quirks and raunchiness. My only real complaint is that the ending – or rather the scene right before the ending – felt out of sync with the tone of the rest of the movie. I understand Smith’s intentions surrounding Holden’s insecurity, but his approach with this scene (which I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen it) comes across as jarring. While Chasing Amy is a bit dated now, overall it’s still a high point in Smith’s filmography.

Joel: I feel like I’ve had a long, complicated history with the films of Kevin Smith. There have been times in my life where a certain Kevin Smith film was the one that seemed to help shape my outlook on the world. There have been other times and other films where it felt like Smith was almost missing the point of his own movie. Still, he’s best known for the View Askew series (any of his movies that Jay and Silent Bob appear in) and Chasing Amy is often hailed as the one that is his “best” movie.

Personally, this movie doesn’t hit me in the same way that others do. Maybe it’s because it’s so out of step with the movies that surround it in the series. Mallrats, is far more over the top, Dogma deals with literal angels, demons and the possible end of the world. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is more or less a cartoon that just happened to be filmed with real people. Compared to the other View Askew movies, Chasing Amy is the one that’s smaller, grittier, and more down to earth, for lack of a better term. I wouldn’t say it’s more personal than his other movies. Kevin Smith is, if nothing else, a very personal screenwriter, who always pours himself into his scripts. Clerks is an obvious example as both of its main characters were literal stand ins for Smith to express his thoughts and emotions through. Dogma, for all its zaniness, is very much seeing a person (Smith) work through his thoughts and struggles with his faith, and figuring out how to reconcile it with other parts of his life.

Much in the same way, Chasing Amy is Smith’s relationship movie. Through these characters we see him tell a very personal story as he tries to work out various relationship highs and lows of his own personal past. I’m not saying the exact scenarios in the movie happened to Smith in real life, but it’s clear that the emotions that the scenes are meant to evoke, are ones that have impacted Smith’s real life relationships. I will say that personally for me, this movie doesn’t gel with my personal taste as much as other movies that take place in the series, but I don’t mean that as a condemnation of the movie. Watching it again all these years later, I feel like this is just as much a personal journey for Smith as his other movies, if not more so. There are points in the movie where the characters make incredibly frustrating decisions, but they’re meant to be frustrating. You’re meant to disagree with the decisions the characters make because I think ultimately, part of this movie is about being unable to make the right decision for a relationship because of personal hangups.

Other Kevin Smith movies have felt like the spoke to me personally more so than this one, but this one like all the other View Askew movies, feels like it’s coming from a very personal place for the filmmaker.

Chris: Man, Holden is an idiot, right? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always enjoyed Chasing Amy as a whole but I feel one of the main things I always come away with this is the feeling that Holden is a massive idiot. We have two scenes in which Holden is being told by both Silent Bob and Alyssa herself that she’s over the whole experimenting thing and all she wants is who exactly Holden is. So basically Holden is driving down a road and passes two massive signs that say “Turn Around, Massive Cliff Ahead” and he shrugs them both off and continues driving. And even in the end, he makes no real indication that the message went through other than he’s sorry. Maybe that’s included in the comic that he released that includes a very personal, some would say traumatic experience. And I know I’m hammering a bit hard on Holden’s character but I do appreciate this movie for how it depicts the fluidity of sexuality and displays it in simple terms that people who’ve only experienced a heteronormative lifestyle can wrap their heads around. There’s a lot of the usual Kevin Smith’s loveable absurdity that we’ve grown accustomed to in his movies but Chasing Amy is a good reminder that there’s almost always a lot of heart that’s also included in all that loveable absurdity. And Jersey Girl and Zack and Miri Make a Porno were good, enjoyable films, I don’t care what critics might have said. We don’t have to talk about Tusk, though.